


Let Go

by dgalerab



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Aged-Up Character(s), Firefighter Lucas Sinclair, Multi, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-03-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:41:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 35,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22722610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dgalerab/pseuds/dgalerab
Summary: Lucas breaks his arm on the job. Mike takes it badly.Also, he might be a little traumatized.
Relationships: Maxine "Max" Mayfield/Lucas Sinclair/Mike Wheeler
Comments: 51
Kudos: 38





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> me, banging pots and pans together: MIKE WHEELER HAS HELLA PTSD
> 
> a v close loved one had a breakdown where their limbs just stopped listening to their brain and they literally nearly crashed their car and when they went to the doctor the doctor was like "have you been through a traumatic event recently" and they were like "yeah" and the doctor was like "yeah" so i think my brain just took that scary moment in my life, went "gnarly" and filed it away for later fanfic usage and here we are
> 
> this fic does deal with trauma, and as such stuff like dissociation, flashbacks, panic attacks, etc. some of those i've had, some not, but i tried to be as descriptive as possible so if that's something that's gonna rattle you, please read with caution. there's also some non-sexual nudity in this chapter, but the characters are like ~23 here so. y'know
> 
> anyway if i need to warn for anything else let me know!

Mike is at work when he gets the call

He’s pretty sure his boss yelled at him for answers as he ran out of the building, but it’s hard to tell since he can’t remember the bus ride over except in the loosest terms. He has flashes of street signs stuck in his mind from the frantic math running in his mind about how much longer until he was at the hospital, but even that is like an odd imprint on the back of his eyelids at best.

The receptionist at the desk stares up at him. She’d asked his name a moment ago. Probably more than a moment ago, from how she’s staring. “Sinclair,” he says, then, “No, no, Wheeler. I’m… Wheeler. He’s Sinclair. He’s… I’m here to see a Lucas Sinclair.”

She stares at him a while longer.

His mouth feels weird. It’s like he doesn’t know where his tongue connects to what. Like he’s just forgotten the shape of his own mouth, lost it to odd tingles that spread all the way down his body.

“Sir,” she says sharply. “Are you family?”

“I’m his emergency contact,” Mike manages, and it comes out all wonky. Distant, teary.

“I know that,” she says. “Are you family?”

He shakes his head.

She sighs.

“He’s still in intensive care for now, you can sit over there and we’ll call you when we transfer him to a room,” she says.

He thinks he nods. He’s not really sure.

He turns to make it to a chair and ends up on the floor. He’s not quite sure how it happens. One second he can feel all his limbs and the next second it’s like they’re not attached and they all just collapse like a bag of sticks.

He has to sit there for a moment, dizzy, and recount each limb like he’s sewing them back on mentally.

“Do you need me to call someone?” the receptionist asks. She’s not exactly kind about it, but Mike supposes she’s very tired. He doesn’t really want anyone to help him right now. (Only Lucas, but Lucas is… is…)

He manages to shake his head, floaty and aching, and crawl his way to a chair. The receptionist watches him for a while longer, checking that he's not literally dying, probably, and then goes back to her job.

Time slips in and out. Sometimes he remembers there’s a clock on the wall and sometimes he barely remembers time is a thing.

At some point, Max is there.

“You don’t look so hot,” she says.

“They won’t let me see him,” Mike croaks, and it  _ hits, _ oh holy  _ hell _ does it hit. Lucas is  _ hurt _ and they won’t let Mike see him, they won’t like Mike go to him, he needs to see Lucas and touch Lucas and he needs Lucas,  _ needs needs needs… _

“Whoa, whoa, breathe,” Max says. “Breathe, Mike, breathe.”

He does his best, but it occurs to him (like an out of body experience) that he’s all but wailing. He bites down on his lip in an attempt to muffle the sound but it just sends the terror curling through the rest of his body and he’s shaking all over, so bad it’s painful. His breathing is harsh and it refuses to reach as far as his lungs.

Max moves up to wrap herself around him. “I’m sure he’s fine, he’s fine,” she whispers. “Ssssh, just breathe.”

He tries, tries to time his breaths to the movement of her chest under his cheek as she pulls him close, arms pinned between them in an attempt to curb the full body shivers.

Someone is talking through the haze of oxygen deprivation and then Max is pulling him up. His legs keep doing that thing, fading in and out of his control, and she has to dance along with him. “Jesus, walk much?” she teases.

He doesn’t rise to the bait, doesn’t feel present enough in his own skin to do so, and he can tell that scares her.

“I’m sorry,” he manages. “I’m sorry.”

He doesn’t want to scare her. He doesn’t want to be a problem. She’s here for Lucas. He’s here for Lucas. _Why can’t he just pull himself together?_

Max gets him to the room somehow, but Mike can’t remember much in the wake of seeing Lucas.

Lucas, in the grand scheme of things, looks fine. His arm is in a sling and he’s a bit ashen, but he’s sitting up and perfectly aware.

Mike tries to sit on the bed beside him but his legs give out and Max has to brace herself and swing him over, close enough to the bed that he can grab onto it.

“What the hell, Mike?” Lucas says. “Come on, help him up a little more.”

“Can he get into bed with you?” Max asks.

“Oh, yeah, it’s just my arm,” Lucas says. "I fell pretty hard on my ribs so they had to do all these tests to make sure my lungs are fine, but in the end it's just bruises." Max puts her arms around Mike’s waist and hauls him up far enough for Lucas to grab him and tug him in.

Mike tries to help, he really tries, but now that he’s seen Lucas and Lucas is in one piece, his body has well and truly given up. He gets one knee up on the bed and flails helplessly with it, but that’s about all he can manage. He’s sobbing, full on weeping, a horrible sound grating its way up his throat. 

It just keeps going, completely out of Mike’s control, until he’s got his face in Lucas’s chest, sobs muffled by the soft fabric of Lucas’s shirt as he cries, open mouthed and desperate, into his shoulder.

Each sob comes with a sharp, gasping breath, and each one is laden with a good lungful of Lucas’s scent - slightly obscured by smoke and antiseptic, but still Lucas’s. 

_ He’s okay he’s okay he’s okay, _ he tries to tell himself. His mind has gotten the message but his heart hasn’t, still stuck in the iron grasp of fear of  _ I can’t lose Lucas, I can’t, please, I can’t… _

Lucas pets his hair, grinning at him through that ashen look on his face. “You were that worried about me?”

Each breath of Lucas’s deodorant makes Mike a little calmer, but he doesn’t feel any less floaty, detached from the situation. “Yeah,” he manages through his stale mouth.

“It’s okay, baby,” Lucas murmurs. “It’s not that bad. They barely even had to give me morphine. Just one clean break and a few burns, but my jacket spared me from the worst of it.”

“Lucas,” Max says sharply. “Are you still in pain?”

“Max,” Lucas sighs. “I’m tired. I don’t want to start yelling at nurses.”

“Oh, I’ll do the yelling,” Max snaps. “You just look after Mike.”

Lucas rolls his eyes. “Good luck,” he says as she storms off.

It’s all so backwards. Lucas is hurt. Mike should be the one looking after him, and yet here he is… He tries to sit up and take charge, be comforting and helpful, but the attempt proves to him how feeble his shaking arms are right now and he ends up back on Lucas’s chest, sobbing full speed again.

“Hey,” Lucas says, wrapping his good arm around Mike. “Just lay here with me, okay? Just lay here. It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay!” Mike cries. “It’s not! None of this is okay!” Not the fact that Lucas was hurt, not the fact that Mike wasn’t allowed to run to his side the moment he’d heard, not the fact that the hospital isn’t even taking care of him right, not the fact that  _ Mike _ can’t fucking take care of him right,  _ none _ of it is even a little okay.

“Mike,” Lucas says. “Stay. Just stay here with me, okay?”

Mike manages to nod his head and cling to Lucas like a baby. Slowly the sobs die down, but the shaking and the feeling of dread remain.

~~**~~

Max drives them home that night. Lucas falls asleep on Mike’s shoulder, and Mike just tries to quell the shaking enough that he doesn’t wake Lucas.

“You okay?” Max asks softly.

He nods. She’s worried about Lucas too, and that’s more important. Mike’s just freaking out. It’s fine. He’s fine.

She’s not convinced, but she doesn’t ask again.

Mike’s crying again when he helps Lucas tape a bag around his cast while Max runs a bath for him.

“Mike,” Lucas says, quiet and soft.

Mike just shakes his head.

Lucas makes a cross noise, but he’s currently on a decent amount of morphine (thanks to Max, who is actually  _ doing _ something…) so he doesn’t argue.

Mike smoothes down the tape and lets him take a nice warm bath while Mike sits on the kitchen floor and tries to breathe.

~~**~~

He dreams about El. About her vanishing into the demogorgon, except when he screams for her, Dustin and Lucas aren’t there like they were in the memory. He’s alone and there’s blood streaks down the floor where the demodogs dragged the corpses away (except that’s the wrong memory, right?) and it’s all dark and he’s trapped and…

And  _ what the fuck,  _ he thinks, once he’s stopped screaming. Who dreams about their ex-girlfriend after a burning building dropped on his boyfriend?

Lucas holds him tight, cast bumping up against Mike's shoulder as he forgets he can’t use that arm. “Sssh, sh, baby,” he’s murmuring. “Ssssssh.”

Mike has no absence of nightmares. Dark woods and halls and looming figures sneak around his dreams all the time, but he usually doesn’t wake up screaming. He usually wakes up when Max starts awake from her own nightmares, and they slink off to watch cartoons so they don’t wake Lucas.

Max dreams about Billy, she says, most of the time. Sometimes he’s pleading for her, sometimes he’s trying to kill her. Sometimes he’s already dead. Sometimes he’s just killed Lucas. Sometimes she finds herself doing and saying what Billy would and can’t stop. 

It’s all twisted and confusing, and it’s no wonder she keeps waking up sweaty and panting from her dreams, dragging Mike out of his own dim, fitful dreams.

But today he’s woken her up, and she’s dragging her fingers through his hair while Lucas holds him and he gags, trying to decide if he’s really smelling blood or if he’s just imagining it.

_ (Not knowing whether or not to trust his mind is familiar. Sitting in his basement, gripping his radio, wondering if he’d sensed a flicker of El’s presence or if he was just losing his mind.) _

“I’m sorry,” he chokes out, because Lucas should be sleeping. He should be sleeping and instead he’s here kissing the top of Mike’s head.

“It’s okay,” Max murmurs, wrapping her arms around him from behind so she can grab Lucas’s arm tight. “It’s okay, I was scared too.”

“Guys,” Lucas murmurs. “It’s okay. We’re all professionals. The second the wall came down all the guys were on it.”

Mike sobs into his shoulder, and Lucas and Max stay curled around him, sandwiching him, and Mike breathes in, out, smelling Lucas’s scent (smoke, pine, a little bit of spice from the aftershave he always uses…) until he falls asleep.

He dreams about Lucas trapped under a burning wall, calling for Mike while Mike tries to claw away the flames and embers, which is much scarier, but at least it feels more on topic.

~~**~~

He still has work.

He still has work and Lucas says he’ll be fine resting and watching movies at home. His arm’s the only thing that’s broken, and Dustin will swing by for lunch.

Mike gets dressed, makes coffee (he doesn’t think he can choke down any food but he’s so exhausted he doesn’t think he’ll make it out the door without coffee) and stands in the kitchen, watching Lucas as he settles onto the couch.

It occurs to him that he’s going to have to leave Lucas, and in some odd background part of his brain, he remembers El walking off after Hopper to go back to that lab where there’s blood on every floor and wall and bodies shredded down every hall and suddenly Mike’s back in that room watching it all happen on what is at most a dozen screens but which feels like hundreds, beaming down carnage at him until it all goes dark and they’re trapped and the smell of blood is everywhere and Mike’s body feels like static and he can’t remember where he is and…

And Lucas is shaking him and calling his name and Mike snaps back into the moment, memories melting together with the now and his body is screaming  _ Lucas, Lucas, Lucas _ and he’s not sure if he’s supposed to be protecting Lucas from demodogs or fire or racist hospital staff or what but he can’t leave, he can’t just  _ leave _ and he’s struggling to remember why he’d even  _ want _ to leave until he’s slurring, “I can’t go to work, I can’t leave Lucas, I can’t go to work, god, don’t make me go to work.”

“Okay,” Lucas says. He sounds scared and Mike frantically searches for why until he realizes oh, it’s him, sitting on the floor of their kitchen covered in hot coffee and shards of mug and shrieking like a drowning cat. Oops, he thinks, with a small part of his brain that’s not going crazy and sideways and upside down. “Okay, don’t go to work. Call in sick.”

“No,” Mike manages, because it's all so massive and it extends out into his life like roots, seeping through every little bit of exhaustion and the blank way he stumbles through his own life, tired and dull and... “No, I want to quit, I have to quit my job, I can’t leave, please, please I can’t leave.”

He’s not sure where that comes from, only that panic is rising in him and he feels like an animal caught in a trap, ready to gnaw off his own leg, and his mouth is connected straight to the sliver of his brain that’s casually looking at all those alarm bells in his head and going,  _ oh, something is, like, REALLY wrong here. _

“Okay,” Lucas says, swallowing as he holds onto Mike desperately. “Okay, we’ve already talked about that, you can quit if you want." Because Mike has two partners and he doesn't have to work a job he doesn't care about, he can just stay at home and theoretically everything will be fine (except Mike, because something is REALLY wrong here). "It’s okay. You can quit your job and stay with me until my arm heals, okay?”

“Okay,” Mike sobs. “Okay.”

The trap loosens up a little bit, which is weird. It’s not like Mike hates his job, it’s just… just a thing he does. Because he has to. And maybe, he thinks, now that his mind is settling just a little, he just reached a point where he can’t handle any more “has to.”

“God, I’m sorry,” Mike mumbles, trying to stand up. 

“Don’t move until I’ve cleaned up this mug,” Max orders him.

“No, I can help, I feel better,” Mike says.

“Mike,” Lucas says, tugging him down sharply. “Stay.”

“Lucas, stop, you should be resting,” Mike says softly. That might be the most coherent thing he’s said since he got the call.

“Yeah, which is why you shouldn’t be fighting me on shit today, stupid,” Lucas says, and tugs him down again. “Just stay here with me, okay?”

Mike wants to complain again, but Lucas is right. He doesn’t have the energy to argue with Mike today. Mike relaxes against him and nearly stops shaking. “Okay,” he says. “Sorry.”

“Jeez _ -zus,” _ Max says as she dusts shards out of Mike’s lap. “You’re actually agreeing to something? Are you dying?”

She’s kidding, but Mike can hear the worry in her voice too. “Did I… like… really lose it?” he asks. He’s a little fuzzy on the details starting from the point where he forgot he wasn’t fourteen years old.

“You zoned out, man,” Lucas says, pulling him in to kiss his head again. “Like, really bad. Like, you dropped the mug and then you were, like, gone for a few minutes.”

“Oh,” Mike says.

“Your eyes were fucking empty,” Max murmurs. “Where’d you go?”

“Hawkins lab,” Mike says. “I don’t know why.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Lucas says. “You’re here now.”

Mike nods. “So are you.”

“Yeah.”

Max finishes mopping up the rest of the coffee. “We’re all here. Now can you change your own pants or are you gonna go all ragdoll on us again?”

“No,” Mike says sulkily. “I’m fine.”

As long as he doesn’t have to leave Lucas, he’s okay.

“There he is,” Lucas says, laughing. “Come on, let’s get you up.”

“I can  _ stand,” _ Mike protests, clambering to his feet. Lucas and Max giggle at him, and everything feels a bit more normal.

~~**~~

Dustin comes over with lunch later in the afternoon, and Mike can barely lift his head to say hi. He’s slotted himself into Lucas’s arms, head in the crook of his shoulder and legs intertwined with Lucas’s, Lucas’s hand with the remote resting on his back, and all the energy in his body (nervous or otherwise) has seeped out of him.

“Jeez, don’t look too excited,” Dustin teases.

“Shut up, like you’re not here just to procrastinate picking your thesis topic,” Lucas jabs. “‘Sides, Mike has been busy freaking out. He was  _ worriiiiied.” _ He nuzzles at Mike’s face and Mike groans at him, burying it in Lucas’s shoulder where he can’t be bothered any more.

“Awww, wore himself out?” Dustin teases, ruffling Mike’s hair as he passes. “And I’m not here _ just _ to procrastinate. I bring gifts.” He shakes a bag of subs at them. “Guessing Max didn’t leave you here with a home cooked meal.”

“Man, you know she can’t cook,” Lucas says, reaching for the bag. He shakes his shoulder. “Mike, sit up.”

“No,” Mike mumbles into his neck. He doesn’t want to move from here ever.

“Yes,” Lucas says. “Did you even eat breakfast after this morning’s… thing?”

“No,” Mike says, groggy as Lucas shoves him up. Normally, he’d probably just lift Mike up by the armpits, but today Mike has to put some effort in himself to compensate for the bad arm.

“What happened this morning?” Dustin asks, pushing a sandwich into Mike’s hands.

“Oh, man, it was freaky,” Lucas says. “He zoned out. For like a full minute or two.” He gracefully doesn’t mention the fact that it was followed up by sobbing on the floor, drenched in coffee, until they gave him permission to quit his job.

“Wait, what?” Dustin says, head whipping around to look at Mike.

Mike wants to fold up and disappear. “My mind’s been a little off since I got to the hospital,” he says. “I couldn’t stand up and I can’t keep track of the time and… this morning I just felt like I was back at Hawkins lab. And then I quit my job, I think. I mean, I didn’t… tell my boss or anything, but…”

“Couldn’t stand up?” Dustin presses.

“Um, yeah,” Mike says. “It was like… my body and my brain just weren’t meshing.”

“Oh man,” Dustin says. “What I wouldn’t give for a cross section of your brain right now.”

“Dustin,” Lucas chides, kicking him in the shin. “C’mon, man.”

“Alright, alright,” Dustin sighs. “But seriously, you should see a doctor.”

“I don’t need to see a doctor,” Mike groans.

“Yeah, you do,” Dustin says. “You’re having a real life nervous breakdown.”

“No I’m not!”

“You did just tell us your body stopped listening to your brain,” Lucas points out. A little too softly.

“I… It was busy!” Mike tries to protest.

“With your nervous breakdown,” Dustin says. Mike opens his mouth and nothing comes out, and Dustin takes pity. “Want me to go with you? As a psych major I know all the best shrinks.” He hums to himself. “I mean, not really, I do neuroscience, which is a whole different animal. But I can ask around.”

“I don’t need a shrink,” Mike says.

“Will and El see them.”

“Yeah, well, they’re…” Mike blurts, then doesn’t know what to call it. “They’re different.”

Dustin narrows his eyes at him. “They didn’t have nervous breakdowns.”

“I’m  _ not…” _ Mike tries, but Lucas is faster.

“Mike,” he says, softly, and Mike, without hesitation, caves.

~~**~~

Dustin gets him an appointment a week later, and Mike’s very unhappy with it, to be quite honest. He’s not ready to stop sleeping on Lucas all day. He barely made it through the phone call with his boss, and even getting dressed in real clothes is exhausting.

Lucas goes with him, throwing a coat over their hands in the waiting room so they don’t have to worry who’s going to stare at him holding Mike’s hand. Mike still feels put under a spotlight, waiting for someone to give them a look or say something that makes Lucas pull his hand away.

The thought of Lucas pulling his hand away gives him the cold shivers, like Lucas letting go is akin to someone dying.

When they call his name, he’s struck by a sense of horror. He doesn’t want to go, he doesn’t want to let go, he’s going to go and Lucas isn’t going to be there when he comes back because something’s going to  _ happen,  _ and he doesn’t know  _ what _ could possibly happen but the lights are neon and the dogs or the flayed or the government or…

Lucas squeezes his hand. “You’ve got this,” he murmurs.

Mike does not got this.

He stumbles his way in, almost trying to remind himself where he is as he sits in the most available chair, and a grey-haired woman with horn-rimmed glasses stares at him.

A few awkward moments tick by, and he slowly manages, “Sorry, did you say something?”

She smiles, patient. “My name is Dr. Coppenhagen. You must be Michael.”

“Mike for short,” he mumbles. Stupid. Everyone knows that. 

(Except for El, and her wide, 12 year old eyes, still terrified after they found her in the rain. Because she’s actually been through shit, unlike Mike, who is sitting here, panicking because he had to let go of Lucas’s hand.)

“Do you prefer Mike?” she asks.

He nods.

She notes it down. “Do you lose time often?”

He shakes his head. “Only for the past few days.”

“What happened in the past few days?” she asks.

He pauses. “My boyfriend broke his arm.” It sounds so ridiculous. So deeply ridiculous. When Will and El go to their therapist, they must take a full three hours just to explain all the things that have happened to them (the redacted version, approved by the Department of Energy). And meanwhile, Mike is here, stammering out his one sentence. “He’s a firefighter.”

“He was hurt while on duty?” she asks.

He nods again.

“I can understand why that would be worrisome,” she says. “Have you ever dealt with a serious injury before? Either your own or that of a loved one.”

He wants to say no, at first. Everyone’s okay. Except for all the times El collapsed from bloody exhaustion. Or when Will was in the hospital because he’d been dragged out of the toxic Upside Down. Or the other time he was in the hospital, possessed. Or the time Billy had nearly cracked his own skull open. Or, now that he thinks about it…

“Does it count if they weren’t loved ones but they were dead and sort of…” He searches for the words and his brain offers up all too clear mental images for reference, “...inside out?” Now he feels dumb on the other side of the spectrum, because had he  _ forgotten _ how those people in the lab had looked after the demo-dogs were done with them? He hadn't, but maybe he'd forgotten how scary it was, which felt worse.

She takes this as coolly as anyone can, with a kind flicker of humor in her eyes. “I think we should start from the beginning.”

~~**~~

Mike would be hard pressed to determine what he feels when he finally gets back to Lucas in the waiting room.

“Hey,” Lucas says, sitting up, blinking at Mike like he’d dozed off. He’s still on a fair amount of painkillers. “How’d it go?”

“Uh,” Mike says. He feels sort of like socks freshly out of the drier. Hypothetically fresh and clean but sort of crusty for reasons he can’t explain. Dr. Coppenhagen had told him to prepare to feel raw and drained later tonight, but he doesn’t know when it’s supposed to hit. “You want to go to Chocolate Moose?”

Lucas gives him a long stare, then cocks his head in acknowledgment. “I could go for some Chocolate Moose.” He gets his coat and helps Mike with his and finally takes him out of that horrible, white waiting room.

~~**~~

Chocolate Moose puts edible googly eyes on their ice cream, which makes it automatically the best ice cream place on the planet.

“So I guess I’m like,” Mike says, looking his ice cream in the eyes as he slowly munches it away, “super traumatized.”

Lucas reaches over to wipe some chocolate off his nose. “Not surprising.”

“I was surprised!” Mike protests. “I mean, what the hell?”

“Dude, we fought a monster made out of the melted bodies of our neighbors,” Lucas says. “I have nightmares too, and I wasn’t even dating the labrat we pulled out of the woods.”

“Okay, yeah,” Mike admits. He pauses. “That lab. When the dogs came through and tore everyone to shreds. It was really bad.”

Lucas visibly has to take a moment to work his way through that sentence. “This… is news to you?”

“I don’t know!” Mike cries. “No one else acted like it was!”

Lucas throws his hands up in frustration. “We weren’t even there!”

“Well…!” Mike starts, before giving up. “Well, I didn’t know.”

Lucas laughs, like he’s horrified of himself before it even makes it out his mouth, but it makes Mike laugh too. “I’m sorry,” Lucas says. “You’re really just hopeless sometimes.”

“Shut the fuck up, Lucas,” Mike says, swallowing down giggles.

“Did you do this to some poor shrink?” Lucas asks. “Oh, yeah, I’m fine, just saw a whole bunch of people get eaten when I was fourteen?”

“I know you’re making fun of me, but I actually did do that,” Mike sighs.

Lucas plants his face in his hand. “What the fuck, man?”

Mike snorts softly. Lucas gives him a tender look, then peels one of the eyes off his ice cream and presses it onto Mike’s. “Thanks,” Mike says. “He’s a monster.”

“There you go,” Lucas says. “And now you can eat him.”

“Fuck off,” Mike says, but he crams bites off the top of the cone and immediately gives himself brain freeze.

~~**~~

He doesn’t wake up screaming but he wakes up sweaty and petrified and feeling like he must have lost someone dear to him forever, somehow. He sits up and watches Lucas and Max breathing, but he’s shaking too hard to decide if it’s their chests moving or him for a gutchurningly long time.

But then that’s not enough, and he has to stumble out of bed to the living room to frantically dial a number and pace back and forth in the hallway.

_ Click.  _ “Hello?” 

“El,” Mike says, only now realizing how close he is to crying. “Hey. Hey, are you alright?”

“Yes?” she mumbles. “Did something happen?”

“No, no, nothing happened,” Mike manages. “What about Will, is Will okay?”

“Will is okay,” El says. She’s 23 years old now, and she still speaks in hesitant little words when she’s tired.

“Um,” he says. “Is… can you… um.”

“Mike,” she says, finally sounding a bit more awake. “Everyone is okay.”

Mike falls back against the wall and slides down, trying to catch his breath.

“Are you okay?” El asks.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yes, yeah, I’m fine.”

“Max was worried,” El murmurs.

Mike doesn’t have the strength to reassure her again, not when he’s curled up on the floor, head between his knees, wrapping his arms around himself as best he can, small hiccuping sobs fighting their way out of his chest. 

“Go wake Lucas,” El says.

“No, I don’t want to,” Mike sniffles.

“Mike,” El says. “It helps.”

“No,” Mike says, more forcefully.

The floorboards creak as Max pads out, squinting through her messy hair. “Who’s that?” she asks, nodding at the phone.

“El,” Mike mumbles.

“Let her go back to sleep,” Max chides, worming her fingers into his own as she stands over him.

“Max is up,” Mike says to El. “I’m gonna go. I’m sorry I woke you.”

“You need Lucas,” El says, direct as ever.

“I know that,” he mutters.

“Goodnight, Mike,” she says.

“Goodnight, El,” he replies.

She hangs up with a click.

“Why are you calling El?” Max asks softly.

“I don’t know,” Mike admits. “She’s first on the list after you guys.”

“What list?”

“People I could lose,” he says. “People I have lost, if only for a while.”

She squeezes his hand. “Want me to get Lucas?”

“No,” he snaps.

“Why not?” she asks, uncharacteristically patient.

Mike doesn’t have that kind of patience. He gets unnecessarily angry instead. “Why don’t you ever wake him for your nightmares?”

“You’re always up first,” Max says. “And I’m usually not sobbing in the hallway calling my ex.”

“It’s not because she’s my ex,” Mike mutters.

“Not my point,” Max snorts.

“I don’t want you to wake Lucas,” Mike says.

“Why not?” she asks, again.

“Because I don’t!” he snaps at her. “Because he broke his arm when a burning building fell on him and I can’t do anything useful for him because I’m having a nervous breakdown, apparently, because I didn’t fucking  _ know _ I was traumatized, and--”

“What exactly would you be doing if you weren’t having a nervous breakdown?”

“I don’t know! Not make him take me to therapy instead of resting?” Mike hisses.

“You’re not doing him any favors by depriving yourself of him, you know,” Max says. 

“I just want to be able to let my injured boyfriend sleep through the night!” Mike sobs.

She stops short, then nods. “Alright.”

He sniffles, trying to shrug her away when she reaches for him, but she doesn’t tolerate that as much. “Come on,” she says. “You can let Lucas sleep but you’re not sitting here sobbing in the hallway for the rest of the night either. Come  _ on.” _

She drags him to his feet. “How about a hot bath?” she asks.

He shrugs.

She takes that as a yes, clearly, because she steers him to the bathroom and sits him on the toilet.

“Why are you awake?” he asks, miserable.

“Nightmares,” she says.

“About what?” he asks.

She smiles that small smile she has whenever she realizes she has to admit she likes him. (Like he doesn’t already know. They may both be dating Lucas for the most part, but they’re not  _ not _ dating each other.) “You.”

“What about me?” he asks, watching her turn on the tap.

“You know that summer?” she asks.

_ The summer where dozens of people melted into a giant monster that nearly ate El’s leg off and killed your asshole brother? _ He doesn’t say that, but she knows he’s thinking it.

“Yeah. Billy threw you into a pipe and you had blood running down your nose, here,” Max says, showing him the trail of blood with her finger on her own nose. “And it was really scary because for a second you wouldn’t wake up. And I know we didn’t exactly see eye to eye that summer, but I didn’t not like you.”

“Wow,” he drawls. "Didn't not like me. Astounding friendship there."

“You know what I mean,” Max says, rolling her eyes, absently dragging her fingers through the water to test the temperature.

He does.

“Anyway, it was more surreal than most of my nightmares,” Max continues. “Because this time it wasn’t just a streak of blood, it was like… like your head was like broken open and I’m trying to pick up the pieces but it’s just too much and I don’t get how to put it all back together.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, automatically. It always feels a little odd to have people worry about him. _He_ doesn't even worry about him, he just wants the weird glitching inside his brain to stop so he can be a good friend and boyfriend again.

She shakes her head. “Not your fault.”

“Join me?” he asks, nodding his head at the bath.

She turns off the water. “Yeah, okay.”

She tugs her shirt off, briefly getting it tangled with her hair. “Undress much?” he asks, and she flips him off while hopping out of her sweatpants. He joins her, stripping down and sliding into the tub first so she can arrange herself around his long limbs.

She leans back, red hair fanning out around her, and stares at him. Eventually, he’s forced to let out a small laugh. “What are we doing?”

“Sharing a bathtub,” she says. “Like people do.”

He slides down a little.

“Ew, don’t slide closer, I don’t want to touch your balls,” she says.

He actually laughs at that. “Wow, okay, some friend you are.”

“I don’t! Want! To touch your balls!”

“I’m going through things right now and this is what you’re worried about?”

“Oh, funny,” she says, wrinkling her nose in a mockery of a laugh. “Keep your traumatized dick off my goddamn leg.” She kicks up through the surface of the water, flicking water into his face.

He giggles, then grins at her. He has to admit, Max is good at making him laugh.

“Keep your traumatized leg out of my face, then,” he says, shoving at her, and she laughs too, nudging back and sending water sloshing out of the tub.

They’re both giggling by the time Max musters the wherewithal to get to the point. “Hey,” she says. “You know Lucas doesn’t mind looking out for your sorry ass, right?” She looks him up and down, like she’s gauging how well he can handle the teasing at the moment.

Mike sighs.

“It makes him feel manly when you’re all…” She feigns swooning, “delicate.” She sobers up. “And I don't know how to say that in a less condescending way but he does it in a good way. You know how he is.”

Mike does know. “Well, I mind. I don't want to be a burden on him.”

“You don’t mind,” Max says. “You just feel like you need to. But at the end of the day, the reason why you and El didn’t work and why you and Lucas do, is because he’s your rock. And he likes it.”

“Why El and I didn’t work?” Mike asks, brow furrowing, because it rankles to think that he and El had broken up because he wasn’t good enough. “Did she say something to you?”

“No,” Max sighs. “That’s  _ so _ not the point of what I was saying, Wheeler.”

“What are you guys doing?” Lucas asks, pushing the door open.

“Nothing,” Max says innocently.

Mike blinks up at him. “Sorry we woke you.”

“I’ll live,” Lucas sighs, then gestures at the puddle on the floor. “Guys! What the hell?”

“Sorry Lucas,” Max says sweetly. She gives Mike a look, like she’s trying to apologize.

“Sorry Lucas,” Mike parrots. He feels like death warmed over, but he’s not upset with her, so he might as well play along with the bit.

Lucas groans. “I’ll get a mop. Jesus. Fuckin' animals.”

“I got it, I got it,” Max says, hopping out of the tub and wrapping herself in a towel, shrugging her underwear back on before she dashes off.

“Bad dreams?” Lucas asks, grabbing a towel to sit on the damp side of the tub without getting soaked. 

“Um, yeah,” Mike says.

Lucas hums, stroking Mike’s hair out of his face.

“Was I not strong enough for El?” Mike blurts.

“What?” Lucas asks.

“Max said we didn’t work,” Mike says. “As well as you and me, because you’re my rock.”

“Well you did break up,” Lucas points out. Mike catches a glimpse of Max returning and then thinking better of it and closing the door for them.

“Yeah, but like… I was trying to be  _ her _ rock,” Mike says. “And was I just not good at it?”

“Mike, who’s the first person she calls whenever she doesn’t know something or needs to talk?” Lucas sighs.

“Me, but--”

“And who does Will call?”

“Also me, but that’s not--” 

“Mike,” Lucas says. “You’re good at supporting people, okay? But you also really put all of yourself into it, until you use yourself up and, clearly, your body just quits on you.”

"That's not because of Will and El," Mike says, protective instinct flaring.

Lucas groans. "That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying, that's why you and El aren't compatible. As _boyfriend and girlfriend,_ not friends, before you ask."

“Oh, what, so because now I’m taking from you it’s okay? It's not okay, Lucas!”

“That's _not_ what I'ms saying! It's okay because I don’t do what you do!” Lucas snaps. “I don’t pour every shred of energy I have into taking care of other people blindly!”

“I don’t do it blindly!”

“You took El into your home the first night we met her in the woods!”

“She looked scared!”

“Yeah, exactly!” Lucas shouts. “I don’t  _ do _ that kinda thing, Mike, because I like to be _sensible._ So when you need shit, and I tell you I can do that for you, I mean it, whereas _you_...”

“This isn’t about me!” Mike shouts back.

“Then what is it about?!”

“I don’t know!” Mike says. Lucas sets his jaw, and Mike realizes he really doesn't want to argue. “I’m just… I feel like everything is a countdown until I lose everyone I love and I don’t know if it’s gonna be the Mindflayer or the U.S. government or the Russian government or just not being goodenough at being there for the people that need me or…” His throat clenches and he barely manages to wheeze out a small, “...or burning buildings,” before he breaks down into tears.

Lucas pulls him in so Mike’s forehead rests against his hip, stroking his fingers up through Mike’s hair. “Mike. Mike, come on.”

“I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry,” Mike sobs. “I don’t know what’s going on with me, I don’t know what I’m scared of, it’s just everything, all at once, and I…”

“I  _ know,”  _ Lucas says. “Which is why I need you to work with me here.”

“With  _ what?” _ Mike snaps.

“With taking care of you,” Lucas says. “I don’t want to spend all my time fighting you tooth and nail over whether or not we should be taking care of you in the first place.”

“I’m not,” Mike mumbles. “I went to the doctor.”

“You did go to the doctor,” Lucas admits. “That was good. But you can wake me up next time you wake up scared, okay? I’ll sleep like a baby knowing you’ll wake me if you need it.”

“You don’t make Max--”

_ “Max _ didn't start having flashbacks in our kitchen,” Lucas says. “You’re struggling. And that doesn’t make you a worse friend or a weak person. But constantly trying to duck out of any of us doing anything to help…”

“Makes me a worse boyfriend?” Mike asks.

“No,” Lucas sighs. “But it’s gonna drive me up the wall.”

“Sounds like a bad boyfriend.”

“How is it so much more annoying when _you_ joke like Max does?”

Mike laughs. “It’s her fault. I picked it up from her.”

“Yeah, yeah, every dumb thing you two do is always the other one’s fault,” Lucas sighs. “You wanna put some pants on?”

“Sure,” Mike says, letting Lucas help him out of the tub.

“Everyone’s fine, Mike,” Lucas says, helping him dry off. “Except for you. So are you gonna suck it up and let me take care of you?”

Mike smiles a little. “Max says you like it when I’m  _ delicate.” _ He imitates her swoony tone.

Lucas groans. “Max is full of shit.”

“You do, though, don’t you?” Mike asks.

“Wish you guys didn’t get along sometimes,” Lucas mutters, tugging Mike’s sweater over his head for him.

Mike grins and pitches forward a little to lean his head onto Lucas’s shoulder.

Lucas pulls him into a tight hug. “Think you can handle letting me ride out the rest of this sick leave pampering you without getting skittish every time you think your nervous breakdown isn’t a good enough excuse for it?”

“Stop calling it a nervous breakdown,” Mike says. “I don’t even feel like I’m having a breakdown anymore.”

“Which is why you’re taking a bath at three in the morning.”

“That was Max’s idea.”

“And I’m sure it had nothing to do with you freaking out, huh?”

“Shut up.”

“Just  _ facts.” _

“Yeah, you’re sooo smart, figuring out I had a panic attack hours after I went to therapy for being traumatized.”

“So you admit it!”

“No I don’t!”

“You did!”

“I didn’t!”

“Whatever,” Lucas says. “I don’t need an excuse to pamper my baby in the first place.”

“You sound so corny,” Mike fires back.

“And you don’t sound nearly as convincing as Max when you say that like it’s a bad thing,” Lucas teases, spreading his stance so he has more leverage to box Mike in and swing him against the sink, sliding down just enough that Lucas can kiss him deeply. He Mike’s waist in, and Mike feels a little dizzy, bending his knees as Lucas maneuvers him to feel held, small in the best way. Safe.

Lucas breaks the kiss and pulls Mike’s head into his shoulder, Mike’s arms pinned against his chest like one of the ladies on the covers of romance novels his mom reads. Mike has to say, he didn't see the appeal until Lucas started doing it.

“We have a deal?” Lucas murmurs into his ear.

“I come to you and let you  _ ‘pamper’ _ me and in exchange you…?”

“I promise I feel really loved and trusted,” Lucas says.

“Oh,” Mike says. “Okay.” And then he wraps his arms around Lucas and cries like he’s never cried before.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i think the main thing i need to warn for here is that i very strongly point out how fucked up it is that "the black guy dies first" is an actual trope, like, several times, mostly bc i was looking up movies they could have seen in 1994 and forrest gump was one of the first suggestions and i was like OOF

After all that, Mike wakes up to an empty bed.

He hadn’t had as many nightmares after going back to sleep, just vivid, strange dreams where nothing made sense and he can’t remember them as he sits up. First, he has a rational moment: it’s probably late, Lucas got up for food or something.

And then panic spikes through him, and he has to find Lucas  _ right now. _ He stumbles out of bed, limbs stiff and head aching, and staggers to the kitchen, where sure enough, Lucas is slipping a mug out of the microwave.

Mike collapses against the fridge and slides down, knocking down a few magnets as he goes. “What the fuck,” he breathes, heart in his throat. “What the  _ fuck.” _

“Hey,” Lucas says, setting the mug on the counter to kneel in front of him. “Sorry, I was just making us some hot chocolate.”

“Mhmm,” Mike says, nodding as he tangles his fingers into Lucas’s shirt. “I know. I know, I’m… What the  _ fuck.” _

“C’mon,” Lucas murmurs, kissing Mike on the forehead. “It’s okay, you’re just sleepy.” He says sleepy in the most adorable way as he wraps his arms around Mike and gets him to his feet.

He sits Mike down in the nearest chair and gives him the mug.

“What time is it?” Mike asks.

“Two,” Lucas says, sitting beside Mike.

“Jesus,” Mike groans. He feels like he’s slept an hour or two at most, but no. Nearly eleven hours after going back to sleep, and he’d gotten a few hours before waking up. “I feel sick.”

“Thirsty, probably,” Lucas says. “Here.” He gets up, clinking around a bit while Mike rubs his hands over his face. He sets down a glass of water and a bowl of oyster crackers in front of him.

“Breakfast of champions,” Mike says, rubbing his temple.

Lucas hands him a bottle of ibuprofen. “And some vitamin I.”

Mike rolls his eyes and slowly makes his way through the offerings before laying his head on the table and sniffling.

“How you feeling?” Lucas asks.

“Like I just went through the wash,” Mike says.

“Okay, you know what?” Lucas says. “C’mon. Let’s go back to bed. I’m weaning off the painkillers, I feel lousy too. We’ll order pizza when we feel like it.”

“Okay,” Mike says, letting Lucas walk him back to the bedroom and shove him face down into the pillows. He doesn’t follow for a moment, but Mike can hear him moving around the room so he doesn’t mind.

“What do you want to read?” Lucas asks.

“Mm,” Mike says. “Something easy.”

“So not Moby Dick, then,” Lucas teases.

“Ew.”

“The Hobbit?” Lucas offers.

“Sure.”

Lucas slides into bed beside him, pulling Mike onto his chest. His cast bumps against Mike’s cheek. “Ugh,” he says. “Your plaster feels nasty.”

“Oh, sorry, didn’t mean to inconvenience you, your highness,” Lucas jabs, rubbing it against Mike’s cheek until Mike bats it away, trying not to smile. “Okay. Let’s see.” He props open the book. “Can you stay awake long enough to turn the pages for me?”

“Yes,” Mike says. He likes the way Lucas’s voice feels rumbling through his chest under Mike’s cheek.

“Good,” Lucas says, and starts reading.

This is the calmest Mike has felt in… possibly his entire life.

His mother had read to him when he was very small, tucking him into bed next to Nancy to tell them stories. And then, Mike figured, the grind of living a suburban life she wasn’t happy with had worn her down, and he’d started reading on her own and Nancy was too old for stories and then a little later Holly was born and there was no time to just sit around in the older kids’ rooms reading them books they could read themselves.

Lately, he hasn’t been able to concentrate on books. First there was high school, trying to balance a long distance relationship. Then college, while navigating Will’s art school panics, El’s questions about seeing the world as an adult, his mother’s divorce, Nancy’s marriage, trying to calm down about the fact that he was dating two people and what if he was just throwing a wrench into a perfectly good relationship by shoehorning himself into it. And  _ then _ it had been finding a job near Dustin that paid well and had benefits so they could afford to put down a down payment for a mortgage. And  _ then _ it was slogging away at that job when it all paled in comparison to their crazy childhoods and it just didn’t  _ matter. _

Suddenly, Mike has to shove himself away from Lucas and get some air.

“Hey,” Lucas murmurs. “You okay?”

“Bilbo Baggins,” Mike says.

“Uh, yeah, that’s the main character,” Lucas says.

“Jesus, I’m Bilbo fucking Baggins,” Mike croaks, pulling his hood over his head and trying to breathe. “Too little butter stretched over like ten different kinds of bread.”

_ “What?” _

“It’s from Fellowship,” Mike explains, annoyed that he has to spell this out for Lucas, who’d learned to write Elvish with him. 

“Yeah, I  _ know,”  _ Lucas says. “So?”

“So, I’m Bilbo!”

_ “So?” _

“He couldn’t come back, Lucas! He sails off to Valinor and--”

“He was a hundred and eleven years old!” Lucas protests.

“He was older than that,” Mike says, with some scorn. “He left with Frodo, so much later than the start of the story, and  _ that’s  _ when he was 'eleventy-one', so he was at  _ least _ 114.”

“What? No. He’s 111 when he leaves Frodo the ring, that was like twenty years before Frodo leaves the Shire,” Lucas says.

“So he’s at least 131,” Mike says, despite the fact that he think it hurts his point, though he’s not sure how.  _ “Which  _ is less in human years!”

“More than 23!” Lucas protests. “In fact, he leaves when he’s older than any living hobbit!”

“Wh… What about Gollum?!”

“He wasn’t a hobbit!  _ Or  _ alive!”

“That’s not the point! I mean... Gollum _was_ a hobbit,” Mike snaps.

"No, he was hobbit-like!"

"No, he was an early kind of hobbit."

"So not an actual hobbit!"

"Yes an actual hobbit!"

"No, he was..." Lucas starts to get up to go look, but Mike stops him with a groan.

“That's _not_ the point! The point is I’m Bilbo Baggins and he never gets better he just sails off of Middle Earth!”

“He’s also not real!” Lucas yells back. “So what’s your point?” 

“I don’t know!” Mike screams.

Silence stretches between them, laden mostly with absurdity. “Mike,” Lucas says. “You’re not going to sail off the face of the planet.”

“No,” Mike says, sullen. “I’ll just be a pain in your neck forever.”

“You got that from the fact that Tolkien gave a good metaphor for how you feel to a guy who was a side character in that book?” Lucas says, crossing his arms.

“It sounds dumb when you say it,” Mike mumbles.

“It  _ is _ dumb!” Lucas cries.

Mike folds into himself awkwardly, and Lucas softens. “I think you’re more Eowyn. Or Faramir, maybe,” Lucas says.

“I marry myself?” Mike mumbles. “Okay, maybe this metaphor is falling apart.”

“Analogy,” Lucas corrects.

Mike groans at him. "No one cares!"

Lucas purses his lips and raises his brow.  “What is this about?”

“I don’t know, I’ve been too tired to read books since the start of high school,” Mike says, and frankly, now that he’s said it out loud, it doesn’t sound so sail-off-to-Valinor-worthy.

“So it’s a good thing you quit your job then, huh?” Lucas says. "You'll actually have time for that sort of thing again."

“Not for you guys,” Mike mutters. “You still have to pay the bills.”

“But at least you can tell us what books are worth reading, huh?” Lucas teases, wrapping his arms around Mike and kissing his cheek. Mike smiles slowly. “After you get some rest I’m sure you’ll do something good with it, Mike. I know you.”

Mike thinks Lucas probably knows him better than anyone, so he does want to believe him. “Okay.”

“You wanna figure out how old Bilbo was when he sailed to Valinor and how old that is in human years?”

“Yeah,” Mike mumbles.

“Okay,” Lucas says, kissing his cheek. “There you go, Bilbo.”

“Don’t tell anyone I said that,” Mike sighs.

Lucas only grins at him.

~~**~~

They end up on the bed, plotting a handful of hobbit ages with presumed human ages so they can make a graph. Lucas does most of the work, sketching out a neat pair of axes while Mike sleepily pages through the book for more examples.

“So you’re only in your 40s in hobbit years,” Lucas determines finally. “Frodo wasn’t even on his adventure by then. You have plenty of time to recover.”

“That’s not even a good analogy!” Mike snaps. “And I thought I was Faramir.”

“If you had to be a hobbit, you’d probably be… hm… Pippin?” Lucas says, grinning.

“I would  _ not _ be Pippin,” Mike protests. “Dustin would be Pippin, you’d be Merry. I’d be Frodo. And El would be Gandalf.”

“Obviously El would be Gandalf,” Lucas says. “But Will would be Frodo.”

“So I’m Samwise?” Mike asks, wrinkling his nose.

“Yep,” Lucas says. “And what does Samwise do?”

Mike groans. “Did you plan this?”

“C’mon, Mike, what does Samwise do?” Lucas grins, shimmying down the bed so he’s nose to nose with Mike.

“He settles down and starts a family,” Mike mutters.

“Yeah,” Lucas says.

“This whole analogy thing is bullshit,” Mike says, mostly because Lucas is very in his space and it’s sort of embarrassing how much Mike likes that.

“I know baby,” Lucas murmurs, rolling them so he’s straddling Mike.

Mike thinks Lucas kisses unlike anyone else on the planet. Max says he’s biased, but Mike thinks she knows what he means. It’s no secret that Lucas likes to feel like a  _ man, _ the way one does, Max says, when they’ve watched Rambo too many times.

Except that with Lucas, being a  _ man _ is a tender, protective thing. Maybe the way Lucas puffs up when he talks about being a  _ man _ is something he got out of movies like Rambo and Rocky and every movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger, but Lucas makes it his own thing. 

Lucas isn’t a stringy little bookish kid anymore, not since he became a firefighter, but it’s not like it ever conflicted with his sense of manhood when he was. Being a man, for Lucas, was being the darkest kid in Hawkins and holding his head high through the way people treated him for it. It was looking out for his friends, whether it was dragging Mike through the mall looking for an undefined apology gift or snatching up an axe to free El from the Mindflayer’s grasp, but always with a sense of pride, squared shoulders and Lucas’s unique spin on the puffed up arrogance he’d gotten from 80s montages.

Except it isn’t arrogance, not when Lucas did it. Because Lucas had earned every bit of pride he had himself. Because Lucas is just as determined and stoic when listening to Max complain about sexist men who couldn’t believe a female flight instructor could teach them anything as he was marching into actual battle against monsters.

And all that is so apparent in the way Lucas kisses. He kisses like he’d probably seen in classical movies, placing his hand on Mike’s waist to drag him into a kiss like he was at risk of fainting, surging up against him to cover Mike with his body. Except Lucas isn’t like any of the men in the movies. He isn’t tender because he thinks you're a damsel who needs kid gloves, he's tender because he likes to be. He doesn’t surround Mike to be aggressive, he does it as a gentle whisper of  _ you’re here now, with me. _

His hands are rough in all the best ways as they roam up the side of Mike’s throat, fingers curled into his palm so the cast doesn’t brush against Mike when he presses his knuckles to his jaw to turn his face into the kiss, the other hand up his shirt to palm firmly at the skin between his shoulder blades, pulling him in close, promising  _ I’ve got you, I’ve got you, I’ve got you. _

It's easy to be breathless when Lucas kisses him, because he kisses with every fiber of his being.

The hand between his shoulder blades coasts down as Lucas moves up to tilt Mike’s head back, coming around to press against Mike’s hip, just below the waistband of his sweatpants, and Mike’s breath hitches, arms coming up to wrap around Lucas and try to pull him closer, even if there was no closer.

And then the doorbell rings.

Lucas sits up, and Mike halfheartedly lifts his head, struggling up onto his elbows.

“That’s probably Dustin,” Lucas says.

“If it is I’m gonna kill him,” Mike says.

Lucas grins at him, like he knows exactly what the source of Mike’s frustration is and he couldn’t be more delighted, and gently taps Mike’s thigh before getting out of bed.

Mike sighs and pads after him.

It is Dustin.

Which sucks, because Dustin takes one look at Mike and says, “Oh, was I interrupting something?”

“Yes,” Mike mutters.

“Well, I brought General Tso’s,” he sing-songs, holding up the bag.

“Dustin,” Lucas sighs. “Have you picked a thesis topic yet?”

“Uh, no,” Dustin says, moonwalking into their kitchen. “But! I have narrowed it down to ten options.”

“How many did you start with?” Mike asks.

“Uh, well, seven, but, listen, okay, I was reading the papers and…”

“Oh my god, Dustin,” Mike and Lucas sigh at once.

“Brains… are so wild, guys, they really are,” Dustin says, looking at them excitedly as he unpacks the food. “Oh man you have no idea how frustrating it is that I can’t study the flayed without unleashing an unholy terror upon this entire dimension. I mean, Will says they did scans of  _ his _ brain but I can’t really ask anyone about that because…”

“... they all died?” Mike volunteered.

“Right, yes, sorry, they did all, like,  _ super _ die, and I am _so_ sorry you had to see all that, bud,” Dustin says, clapping his shoulders. The fact that he moves on right away even as he’s still holding Mike’s shoulders is oddly comforting. “But even if the records had survived they’d be wildly classified and not really enough for a study, so I’m trying to find a cross section between those funguses that hijack ants and viral infections that attack the brain in humans, but it’s not really working very well. And  _ then _ also, again, so sorry buddy,” he shakes Mike as means of comfort, “it is so fascinating that Mike’s brain, just, like, gave up on him? And about a full decade after the fact, too! So trauma would also be a really interesting thesis topic, not about you specifically, Mike, though if you wanted to spend some time in an MRI machine for me…”

“Alright, stop trying to make my boyfriend into your science experiment,” Lucas says, sitting Mike down.

“Oh, don’t give me that tone, look, he finds it fun, he’s smiling!” Dustin insists.

“No I’m not,” Mike says, like a liar.

“What do you mean you’re not? I see it. I see you smiling. With my eyes!”

“Nu-uh.”

“What…? What the hell do you mean, nu-uh? I’m not seeing what I see with my eyes?”

“If I’m smiling it’s only by accident,” Mike informs him.

“Oh, bull,” Dustin says, sitting down across from Mike and taking a box of food.

“Leave him alone, he’s fragile,” Lucas says, kneading Mike’s shoulders teasingly.

“Oh, screw you too,” Mike laughs.

Lucas chuckles and kisses his cheek.

~~**~~

Spending his days sleeping with Lucas, playing video games and reading comics while eating leftover pizza isn’t so bad. In fact, it’s surprisingly relaxing. The nightmares don’t go away, but Mike can roll over and slip under Lucas’s arm and go back to sleep, and in the morning he wakes up still breathing in his scent.

But then Lucas has to go back to work, and it all gets bad again.

“You know I don’t  _ need _ to go,” Lucas tells him in the morning. “It’s just light duty. I can talk to the Captain, tell him I still need some more time at home.”

“No, I know you’re getting cabin fever,” Mike mumbles. “I’ll be okay.”

“Are you going to call me if you’re not doing well?” Lucas asks. “Max and I can both come home any time.”

“Yeah, I’ve told the airport staff what’s happening,” Max says. “If I need to come home, someone will sub out for me for my lessons.”

“I will,” Mike says.

“Want me to pick up anything at Blockbuster for you on my way home?” Max asks.

Mike shrugs. “X-men cartoons?”

“Okay,” she says, kissing the top of his head and grabbing her keys.

“And you know both our extensions, right?” Lucas asks. “I’ll be at headquarters the whole time so…”

“I wasn’t planning on calling 911,” Mike says.

“Hello operator, I miss my boyfriend, it’s an emergency,” Max calls from the door as she pulls on her shoes.

Mike snorts.

Lucas rolls his eyes. “Just wanna make sure you’re not gonna be sitting here having flashbacks all day.”

“I’ll call,” Mike assures him. “And Dustin will probably stop by with lunch anyway, because he’s only down to three topics.”

Lucas grins. “Point taken.” He cups Mike’s face in his hands. “I’ll miss you.”

“Bullshit, you’re gonna have fun being back at work,” Mike says, smiling a little.

“Okay, maybe,” Lucas says. “So?”

Mike shakes his head, smiling to himself. “Have fun.”

Lucas gives him one more kiss and skids after Max.

The house is way too empty now. 

Mike used to work a 9 to 5 job. Compared to him, Lucas was often working long shifts, but Max had control over her hours and was often home around the same time as Mike. He’s not really used to this house alone.

He watches Ghostbusters.

Lucas wouldn’t be Venkman, he determines, but only because Venkman is actually more of an asshole than Mike remembers.

Then the movie ends, and Mike watches the blank TV, numbly contemplating if maybe he should get up to turn it off until the doorbell rings, and he switches to numbly contemplating if he should get that.

He must spend too long thinking about it, because Dustin uses his spare key, pushing the door open and giving Mike a long look. “So what is this?” he asks. “I thought you might be dying or something.”

“What would I be dying of?” Mike mumbles, still slumped over the couch like a lump.

“I don’t know, brain shit? What am I, an expert?”

“Literally yes.”

“That was the joke, you missed it. Anyway, I finally chose a topic, so now you have to sit with me and keep me from calling my advisor to change it.” He closes the door and stands over Mike expectantly. “Y’know, sitting? You remember sitting?”

“No,” Mike says.

“You know, you picked up a fair amount of attitude from El,” Dustin said. 

“Great,” Mike replies.

Dustin sighs, putting today’s lunch on the TV stand. “Okay, no. When was the last time you’ve left the house?”

“Therapy.”

“Nope. No. Get up, we’re going to the movies.”

“No.”

“You’re not as cute as El, you can’t get away with that,” Dustin says, putting his arms around Mike and hauling him to his feet. Mike stays like a ragdoll for a while just to fuck with Dustin. “C’mon, my mom keeps getting on me to watch Forrest Gump, let’s go.”

“Fine,” Mike says. He grabs Lucas’s jacket, though, wrapping tightly so that it rides up to his ears.

Frankly, he doesn’t remember much of the half of the movie he makes it through.

He wishes he could say the same about puking in a movie theater bathroom for a full ten minutes before Dustin drives him home.

He’s still shivering on the couch under two blankets when Lucas gets home.

“What happened?” Lucas asks.

“They killed the black guy,” Dustin says, jokingly, but Mike can hear the worry in his tone.

“Boy, do I have bad news for you about movies,” Lucas teases, sitting beside Mike on the couch to comb his hands through Mike’s hair.

“I don’t remember much about it but I think Elvis stole rock and roll dancing from a white kid instead of Bo Diddley?” Mike slurs. 

“I  _ am _ getting through to you,” Lucas says, faux touched. “I’m a little turned on right now.”

Mike flips him off.

“That’s the first coherent sentence he’s said since we left the movie theater,” Dustin says. “I see what you meant by zoning out.”

“Did you have more flashbacks?” Lucas asks, rubbing Mike’s back.

Mike shakes his head. “I actually, um,” he says, “I don’t remember much of… like the whole day? Like after that keg party we went to on Main?”

“Oh, yeah, you were  _ wasted,” _ Lucas snorts.

“I didn’t know mixed drinks are worse,” Mike says, shakily sitting up. “But I’m… I think I’m over it now.”

“You sure?” Lucas asks.

Mike sighs. “I know you said to call, but is this really what we’re coming to? You can’t go to work because movies are racist?”

Lucas laughs. “Want me to get my mom’s list?”

“Your mom had a list?” Dustin asks.

“Still does,” Lucas says, squaring his shoulders like he’s bragging about it. “Yours truly didn’t see a single black man die on screen until I was ten years old.”

Mike slumps against Lucas. “I’m sorry about racism.”

“Thanks, Mike, that really makes a difference,” Lucas jokes, thumbing at the back of his neck comfortingly.

Mike mumbles incoherently into his chest.

“If it makes you feel better, I didn’t have much faith in you for today,” Lucas teases, rubbing up and down Mike’s arm.

Mike scowls at him, but that just makes Lucas chuckle.

“I’m sorry. I thought I’d be helping,” Dustin says, ruffling Mike’s hair. “I thought fresh air would do you some good.”

“It’s not your fault,” Mike says.

“Maybe some actual fresh air?” Lucas asks. “I’ll tell Max to meet us at Bryan park.”

Mike whines at him. They can’t cuddle at Bryan park.

“Nooo,” Lucas chides. “Dustin’s right. You’ve been in bed for the past week. You gotta stretch your legs. C’mon, we’ll walk there.”

Mike whines harder, but he lets Lucas drag him out of the blankets and to the door.

“Is that my jacket?” Lucas asks, grinning.

“Yes,” Mike mumbles, letting Lucas take him by the hand as they step outside.

“Cute,” Lucas says, grinning. He subtly links his pinky with Mike’s as they walk.

There are children playing and joggers criss-crossing across Bryan park. It’s getting too cold for Shakespeare in the Park, but some of the stage is still set up. It's nice, Mike supposes.

They walk down the path to a bridge beneath the willows where they like to hang out when they come here.

Mike sits down beneath the willow, yawning. Lucas squeezes his calf and then sits back.

“You know, maybe we should go out for lunch tomorrow,” Dustin asks. “Nice and easy, just lunch and then back home.”

“Dustin, what are you procrastinating now?” Mike sighs, letting his head roll against the willow tree.

“I’m not,” Dustin says. “It’s fifteen minutes to drive from campus to your place and back. And then there’s a whole two or three streets to eat our way through. We could go to Dagwood’s, or La Bamba’s. Burritos as big as your head? Come on, can’t say no to that.”

“And that painting that Will hates so much?” Lucas teases.

“Those burritos with faces  _ are _ horrifying,” Mike says. “And I don’t understand why they’re playing basketball.”

“We’re in Indiana, what do you expect?” Lucas says.

“Uh, not a pack of burrito-headed monsters playing basketball,” Mike argues.

“You’re avoiding the question,” Dustin says. “Come on, you’re gonna develop agoraphobia at this rate. You should at least set foot out of your house every day.”

Mike grunts at him sleepily.

“He’s right you know,” Lucas says.

“Okay,” Mike says.

“Wow, who’d have thought that when you break Mike down to his rawest form, he reverts to agreeing with Lucas without questions?” Max says as she joins them, hands stuffed in the pockets of her bomber jacket. 

“Hey, Max, guess what?” Mike says, and then flips her off.

She lets out an intentionally dumb-sounding faux laugh, and he tries to catch the resulting grin before it happens, but he can’t help it. Max makes him laugh.

“Hey,” Lucas says, stretching up to accept a kiss from Max as she swoops in to press it to his lips. He glances at Mike, then puts on a self-important tone and says, “Acting Captain Mayfield, please take care of Mike in my stead.”

“Oh, yes Captain,” Max says, winking at him. She descends on Mike with a predatory grin, wrapping her arms around him.

“Fuck off!” he gripes, out of pride mostly, as she kisses all over his face. “No!” He wrestles with her for a moment longer before he simply wants to accept the comfort too much, and he goes limp against her.

“That didn’t take long,” Max remarks. “Still feeling bad?”

“Mike learned that movies are racist today,” Lucas offers. “He was shocked and horrified.”

“I hate both of you,” Mike whines.

Max laughs. “What’d you watch?”

“Forrest Gump,” Dustin offers.

“Isn’t that a Vietnam movie?” Max says. “Dustin, why are you taking a traumatized man to see a ‘Nam movie?”

“I didn’t know it was a ‘Nam movie!”

Lucas gives a tired sigh. “Dustin.”

“Whaaaaaat? I’m a tired grad student, I can’t be expected to know what movies are about!”

“You have to be careful with the baby,” Max says, shaking Mike gently. 

“You’re the  _ worst,”  _ Mike mutters.

Max kisses him in response.

~~**~~

“Max,” Mike says, when they’re home and they’ve all but kicked Dustin out to go write an outline for his thesis. “Can I have a second with Lucas?”

“Sure,” she says. “I should shower anyway.”

“Sorry,” Mike says.

“Don’t worry, I’ll collect the boyfriend time I’m owed when you’re not falling apart at the seams,” she says, kissing his nose before she leaves. He makes a face at her that makes her laugh as she does.

Lucas rolls up his sleeves and sits down on the couch beside him. “What’s up?”

“I guess it’s just…” Mike murmurs, sighing awkwardly. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to take myself seriously when I’m having meltdowns over stuff that’s just, like, life for you.”

Lucas stares at him for a moment, giving a hearty attempt at stifling the breathy laugh that breathes out of his chest anyway. “I’m sorry,” he says, trying not to laugh. “It’s just you really just say things all the time.”

Mike groans. “I’m not suggesting I’m experiencing racism, you  _ know _ what I mean.”

“Yes, I do,” Lucas says, still laughing. “It’s just that… you know, that’s kind of what it is. When I see a black guy die in a movie, it’s an entirely different experience from when you do. I’m experiencing racism, you’re experiencing PTSD. It’s not even apples and oranges, it’s like comparing apples and eggs.”

“Yeah, but…”

“No, no, listen,” Lucas says, taking his hand. “You’ve been through shit. That’s serious. You had a meltdown.  _ That’s _ serious. You being scared and upset is  _ serious. _ It just is. And frankly, the things other people go through, they don’t factor into that equation.”

Mike frowns at that. “But…”

“Mike, do you want me to be harsh?” Lucas asks.

“I mean I guess,” Mike mutters under his breath.

“Using other people’s problems as a reason not to acknowledge your own doesn’t help them,” Lucas says. “It just…”

“Makes it harder for my loved ones to take care of me, I know,” Mike mumbles. “I’m  _ trying.” _

“I know you are,” Lucas says. “Do you need me to keep saying it?”

“I guess so,” Mike grits out, throwing his hands up.

Lucas chuckles again, a small, helpless sound, and pulls his arms back down so Lucas can surround him with his own arms. “Mike. It’s okay. It’s really not that hard.”

Mike huffs at him.

“Mike,” Lucas laughs. “It’s not. Just tell me when you need it, like you did today, and I will. You actually did good today.”

“I puked in a movie theater bathroom,” Mike mumbles.

“Yeah, but after that,” Lucas says, nuzzling at his hair.

Mike melts against him, grumbling his frustration.

“Look,” Lucas says, “yeah. No one in our friend circle has it easy. We’ve all got our shit to deal with, whether its from the Upside Down or not. And I’m not gonna say racism isn’t that bad. Seriously, if I say that, I’ve been replaced and…”

Panic rushes through Mike, memories of the flayed flashing through his mind with a severity they’d never had before now. “Don’t say that, don’t say that,” he whimpers, curling up against Lucas.

“Okay, okay, sorry,” Lucas murmurs, pulling Mike’s legs into his lap. “I’m sorry. But that’s my point. Until you can leave the house without being panicked all day, you can put yourself first. It’s not selfish.”

“Feels selfish,” Mike mumbles, trying to breathe in Lucas’s shirt.

“Look, I of all people know how well you can fit your entire foot in your mouth,” Lucas jokes.

“Sorry.”

“‘S okay. It’s endearing how dumb the things you say can be.”

“Thanks?”

“But you’ve never been selfish. At best you can get a  _ little _ bit of tunnel vision.”

Mike hums his agreement.

“It’s okay, Mike,” Lucas says. “And I’ll keep telling you that as long as you need to hear it.”

“And if it isn’t?” Mike asks, just to be contrary.

“Then you know I’ll tell you that, stupid,” Lucas says.

Mike smiles softly. “I guess so, yeah.”

“Yeah,” Lucas says, scooping Mike up into his arms as he stands. “Now, bedtime.”

“Max time,” Mike offers.

“Bedtime with Max,” Lucas allows.

Mike grins and rests his head on Lucas’s shoulder, satisfied.

~~**~~

The next few days are uneventful.

Mike recounts the events of the past few days to his therapist and gets a handful of ways to deal with panic attacks, which doesn’t come in handy because he spends the next few days after that too tired for panic attacks.

He stays in bed all day, too exhausted to even get a book, dozing in and out until Dustin gets him for lunch, at which point he acts mostly as a lump of vaguely human material for Dustin to use as a sounding board for his thesis organization. At Mike’s old job, several of the programmers had talked to rubber ducks - Mike thinks he’s the world’s tallest rubber duck.

And then when Dustin drops him off, he puts on some Star Trek and dozes on the couch until Lucas or Max comes home, at which point he usually realizes the tape ran out hours ago and he didn’t notice or bother to switch it.

Max and Lucas try not to fret, but he knows the fact that he can’t muster much more than one word answers to anything they say scares them.

Next time he goes to therapy, he comes away with a handful of ways to deal with dissociation and a sick feeling like whatever is happening in his brain is perpetually moving the goalposts before he can do anything at all about it.

He spends the next two days trying to name five things he can see, feel and hear, even when the only thing he can see is the ceiling above their bed.

But the third day, he manages to eat enough at lunch that Dustin breaks out into his classic grin, even though they’re eating Indian food that day and it’s a little too hot for Mike.

By the fourth, he tells Dustin about the exercise and they spend a good half an hour naming things they see in the park behind the physics department together like a bizarre game of trauma-ridden I-spy, and Mike is actually hungry by the time they decide on eating Korean food.

It’s a small victory, but a victory.

On the fifth day, El shows up, Hopper in tow.

He stares at her for a while. He still hasn’t been able to get out of bed for the doorbell lately, but that’s never bothered El.

“Aren’t you supposed to be studying for the GED?” he asks, finally.

“Mike,” she sighs, opening her bag to show her books with a condescending look. “Will would have come too but he needs the studio.” She stretches her arms out. “Big paintings.”

Mike smiles. El is more than capable of talking in complete sentences these days, but she still prefers her to-the-point, fragmented sentences. The rest of the sentence is just window dressing to her. 

“Help me study?” she asks, tossing down a stack of cards beside him.

“El,” Hopper says. “A second, please?”

She glowers at him. “Be nice.”

“I will,” he promises, and she stalks off, door slamming itself shut behind her.

Hopper sits on his bed, sighing. “Hey, kid. How’re you doing?”

Mike shrugs. “Fine, I guess,” he says. It’s a lie, but he doesn’t feel comfortable spilling his guts to Hopper.

“I should have noticed,” Hopper says. “I, uh… I guess I let myself think if I kept you in one piece, that… the _feelings_ part of it weren’t as important. I figured… I’m not your dad, you know?”

Mike doesn’t point out that his dad is as helpful emotionally as a stack of hay, and nods.

“Thing is, I know your dad,” Hopper says. “And I knew your mom didn’t know anything that was going on with you, so I should have stepped up. Instead I got carried away seeing you as my daughter’s boyfriend.”

“We were making out a _lot_ that summer,” Mike mutters.

“A whole lot,” Hopper says. “And… I'm still not sure that was great for you guys, but I should have… Well, I should have done a lot of things better that summer.”

“Yeah,” Mike says awkwardly, because yeah, he’d had a terrible time panicking over a break up that summer, but Hopper had spent several years in a Russian prison camp, so it seemed he probably had more regrets than Mike did. “I mean, in the grand scheme of things, you getting mad at me for making out with your daughter too much isn’t that bad.”

“It is,” Hopper says. “Because this stuff all adds up. And I was with you when all that shit happened in the lab, when Bob died and you were right outside. I lied to you about El being alive and safe, and I know what that did to you, and I should have been the adult in the situation and dealt with it.”

Mike doesn’t get a lot of apologies. He wants to accept the apology and be done with this mortifying show of vulnerability from Hopper, but the anger at a  _ whole year _ questioning his own sanity runs deeper than he’d realized. He tries to go middle of the road and shrug.

“Thing is, I get scared,” Hopper says. “And then I try to hide it with anger, and that anger just takes over. And I get really, really scared of losing people, especially a kid,” Hopper admits. “I think that’s something we have in common. Not the kid part, I mean…” He makes an awkward gesture.

Mike nods, swallowing down the lump in his throat as tears blur his vision.

Hopper sighs. “Look, that summer, I let myself start thinking that losing my daughter to her growing up and falling in love and just… getting distant, you know? I thought that was as bad as losing a daughter to leukemia. And I know that’s pretty, well, stupid, but…”

Mike shakes his head. “I did the same thing. I thought if you banned me from seeing her or if she dumped me… that would… be as bad as when I thought she was dead. So… you know.”

“Yeah, except you were a kid,” Hopper says firmly. “And I was an asshole.”

Mike manages half a smile.

“So,” Hopper says. “I know it’s not too impressive that I managed to come around and be an adult in the past… ten years. But I know what you’re going through. And I know it’s rough. So if you need anything, I’m here.”

“If it makes you feel any better, you’re still a better dad to me than my own,” Mike offers, trying to joke and falling flat.

“Funny, that’s what Jonathan said when I married his mom,” Hopper says, smiling softly. “But I think he almost likes me now, so that’s a good sign for us.”

Mike laughs, and then the tears catch up with him and he breaks down. “I don’t even know what it is that’s hitting me so hard,” he chokes out. “Lucas getting hurt set it off and now it’s like everything else that's ever happened to me just…”

“Like a minefield,” Hopper says, calmly. “One mine goes off, sets off all the others. I know. Once the fear hits you, you remember everything that put it there.”

He puts an arm around Mike, and he’s so huge, so good at enveloping Mike even though Mike is taller than most people he knows, that Mike breaks down even further, tears streaming down his face.

Hopper rocks him, like a baby, and Mike thinks he would protest normally, but right now it just feels like this hug is the only thing holding Mike together.

“I know, kid, I know,” Hopper says. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.” He hugs Mike tighter. “Look, whether it feels like it or not, you got a lot of people who love you, okay? Now that they’re realizing you need a little bit of attention yourself, you should take advantage of that. What you’re going through is real. And it’s hard. And you’re gonna need help to get out of it, but you _will_ get out of it.”

Mike nods, sniffling hard. “I’m trying. I’m really trying.”

“Good,” Hopper murmurs. “That’s good.”

He stays with Mike until Mike stops crying.

“C’mon. Get up, get dressed,” Hopper says.

Mike grimaces at that, wiping his face.

“No, trust me on this,” Hopper says. “You gotta get out of bed as much as you can, or you’ll just feel more tired.”

Mike sighs, shakily rolling out bed. Hopper helps him with a hand on his back, then claps him on the shoulder and leaves him to it.

Mike thinks getting dressed properly takes him about ten minutes of slowly working his pants up his legs. He hasn’t worn actual pants with a zipper for weeks now - Dustin just drags him out in sweatpants and slippers.

He pulls on a button up, doing the buttons one at a grueling time, and then a sweater, and then sits there blankly on the side of the bed, looking at himself in the mirror. The guy in the mirror looks like a whole human being with actual muscles that work, but Mike just feels like a broken Disneyland automaton with a dinged up paint job.

Five things he can hear and see, he reminds himself, slowly collecting the list, whispered under his breath, and then he slowly crawls to his feet and goes back to the kitchen, where El, it seems, has taken over their kitchen, spreading out her study materials.

“There you go,” Hopper says, and El nods approvingly. "You look less like something the cat dragged in."

Mike rolls his eyes. “Alright, what are we studying?”

“Grammar,” El replies.

“Alright, well that’s certainly something you enjoy, huh?” he says. She wrinkles her nose, making Hopper laugh. “Though I warn you, yesterday's triumph was that I was hungry enough to eat an entire meal, so don’t expect a lot of... anything from me.”

“Quiz,” she demands, handing him her flashcards.

Her handwriting is still a little wobbly, but it’s taken on a personality and become legible in the past few years.

“These cards are nice,” he says.

“Thank you,” El says. “Quiz.”

“Okay, okay,” he says. “I’m working on it.” He rubs his eyes and squints at the card. “Okay, name me some prepositions.”

“Above,” El says, thoroughly bored. “In. Down. To-ward.”

“Toward.”

“Too-ward.”

“Toward,” Mike laughs. El’s pronunciation sometimes hits a wall when she learns a new word wrong at first.

“Whatever,” she says petulantly.

“Okay,” he says. “It is a written exam.”

“Yes.”

Hopper snorts behind Mike as he starts doing their dishes.

“Six more prepositions to go,” Mike tells her.

She grumbles at him.

~~**~~

They eat at Ponderosa for lunch, El’s favorite place to eat in Bloomington. Mike thinks she likes the experience of piling her food onto a plate from a buffet, like some kind of scavenger. That, and he thinks she likes the tiny cubes of ham they have at the salad bar.

He watches her load them onto her plate en masse.

“So, have you decided what you’re going to study?” he asks.

“English,” she says. “Here.”

“At IU?”

“Yes. Dustin says we can be roommates.”

Mike smiles and nods. “English, huh?”

“I like poetry.”

“It’s a lot of books,” he warns. She gets tired reading. It's new to her.

“Books on tape.”

“And grammar, probably,” he teases.

She makes a displeased face. “Yes,” she says, accepting it for what it is.

He grins.

She gives him a cool look, like she's warning him against trying to bullshit her. “How are you?”

He takes a slow breath, tamping down the urge to respond  _ fine _ out of reflex. “Not great, honestly.”

She nods. “Max… calls me.”

“I’m glad she has someone to talk to,” he says. “I mean… I’ve kind of been taking up Lucas’s attention.”

El shrugs. “She’s okay with it. He’s good at balancing.”

“He is,” Mike says. “He’s good at helping, too.”

El nods, heading back to her table. “I’m not,” she says, making sure he's trailing after her. “Good at comforting.”

Mike snorts. He can’t argue. El’s talents lie elsewhere.

“What I know about it I learned from you,” she says. “Is it bad to use someone’s advice to comfort them?”

Mike smiles softly. “Are you kidding? No, it’s very flattering.”

She nods solemnly. “You’re going to be okay,” she says. “I know it.”

She means it, too, big brown eyes sharp as they fix on him. He nods helplessly.

“And I’m here,” she says. “So is Will. Figura-tev-el-ee.”

“Figuratively,” he says.

She sets down her plate and opens her arms. “I forgot. Will sends this.”

He sets down his plate too and accepts the hug. “Yeah, tell him _me too.”_

“And now it’s from me,” she says.

“Okay,” he replies, patting her back.

“Good,” she declares, and sits down to eat, elbowing Dustin when he joins them and encroaches on her space.

Mike doesn’t have as much hope as she does, but since he is hungry, he decides to trust her judgement and eat in peace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, gently peppering in references to bloomington, indiana: yes this is absolutely something people will pick up on
> 
> anyway max is the Designated PDA Conduit in this relationship and she takes her job VERY seriously bc honestly being an interracial same-sex couple in 1990s indiana is exhausting.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i didn't proofread this bc i did art for it and i wanted to post it already
> 
> i don't think there's any warnings for this chapter specifically. we're in the eye of the storm here guys
> 
> edit: there is more tasteful non-sexual nudity and on that note here's [the art](https://dgalerab.tumblr.com/post/190896064007/ben-wyatt-voice-its-about-the-casual-domestic).

Eventually, El has to go back to Indianapolis and Dustin has to cancel their daily lunch for a longer meeting with his advisor, leaving Mike with the whole day to himself.

He’s determined not to spend it all in bed.

Getting dressed lately feels like a checklist. Shirt, pants, sweater, sock one, sock two. Each is a task unto its own. Then getting up is another task, and finding the phone is one, and dialing the number is yet another.

He lets his head fall back against the couch as it rings, sighing.

“Karen Dunn,” she replies, after a few rings.

“Hey, Mom, it’s me,” Mike says.

“Oh, Mike. Hi. How are you?”

There’s suddenly no way to say this without sounding absurd, so he just goes for it. “So I had a nervous breakdown and I quit my job and I was wondering…”

“I’m sorry,  _ what?” _

“I… had a nervous breakdown,” Mike says, and he does understand why she can’t move on from that right away but he wishes she would. “Anyway, um…”

“Oh my god, do you need me to… should I drive down there, or…?” She at least sounds too baffled to panic.

“No, no, I don’t want you to get in trouble with your job, I know you got that promotion you wanted and--”

_ “Screw _ that! Michael, I will--”

“Mom!” he pleads. “Come on, please it’s fine. I’m fine.”

“A nervous breakdown is not  _ fine!” _

“That’s not… I know that, I just… Please. I don’t want you to throw everything away over this. I know you’re happy at your job and it’s a relief, so just… don’t, okay?”

There’s a long silence over the end of the line. “Okay. Fine. Do you need  _ anything _ else?”

“I was hoping you could teach me how to cook?” he asks.

“How to cook?” she repeats.

“Yeah,” he says. “It’s just, I usually end up staying in bed all day if I’m left alone and I want to actually do something for Max and Lucas when they get home, so… You know.”

She sighs heavily. “Okay. Something easy?”

“Yeah. And I have to bike to Kroger’s, so not too many ingredients,” he says.

“Are… Are you okay to bike to Kroger’s?” she asks.

“It’s like five minutes away,” he says. “And… for the most part I feel okay.”

“What do you mean  _ for the most part?” _ she presses.

“I mean… it doesn’t seem that bad until it hits and then suddenly it’s really bad,” he says. “And it goes in waves. So. Sometimes it’s panic attacks and sometimes I zone out. But… mostly I’m just tired. Right now it’s okay.”

“Okay,” she says, like she’s trying to convince herself. “Um. You know what, I will… I will just give you a list, and then when you’re back from shopping, call me again, alright? It’s my day off, I’ll be here at home until I pick up Holly from school.”

“Okay,” he says. “Thank you.”

“Jesus, Michael,” she breathes.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “Sorry.” He hangs up quickly before she can say anything else, feeling horribly guilty for not having said anything before and also, somehow, for saying anything at all. He rubs his hands over his face and gets his jacket.

~~**~~

He bikes to Kroger’s just fine, spends a good while watching the sprinklers come on over the fruits and vegetables, his awareness melting into the tinny little drone of “Singing in the Rain” in the background until he finally remembers he was here for carrots.

But he bikes back just fine too, and calls his mother just fine, and stands in the kitchen waiting for her to pick up with a sense of general directionlessness.

“Did you make it there and back alright?” she asks.

“Yeah,” he says, and doesn’t mention that he stood in the produce aisle for - he checks the time - probably 20 to 30 minutes without realizing. “It was fine. Probably good for me to move a little.”

“Okay. Well. Put me on speaker, you’ll need your hands.”

He nods, putting the phone on the counter. 

“Start with the onions.”

“Okay,” he says, and starts peeling. “This is the first time I’ve left the house alone in over a month.”

“A  _ month?” _ she asks.

“Yeah,” he says, wincing. “I mean… I’ve… Lucas broke his arm so we’ve just been hanging out, mostly. No big deal. And I’m going to therapy, so… you know. We’ve got it handled.”

“Oh,  _ god, _ why wouldn’t you t _ ell me?” _

“I don’t know,” Mike says. “I didn’t tell Nancy either.”

“I’ll tell her,” Karen replies. “And I’ll make sure she doesn’t quit her job to run after you.”

“Thanks,” he murmurs.

“You want me to get your father to cover therapy costs?” she asks. “It’s the least he can do.”

“The most he can do,” Mike mutters.

She laughs a little. “I was trying to be nice.”

Mike sighs. “Sure, if he wants to cover them, that’s fine. But we’ve got it. He already helped out with the mortgage.”

“I think maybe the divorce kicked him into gear a little,” she says. “But… well. He doesn’t know much else to do.”

“Yeah, I know,” he replies. “I’ve cut up the onions, what next?”

“Okay, put them on low heat to start frying and then put a pot of water on high to boil.”

“Right,” he says, and does it.

“You know, I’m constantly thinking Nancy iss the most stubborn of all my kids but then I always realize I’ve just forgotten you again,” Karen says.

He snorts at that. “I don’t think people often call me quiet.”

“You’re quiet when you shouldn’t be,” Karen says. “And I’m so sorry.”

“You were doing your best,” he grants her.

“Well. Maybe. I’m not even sure of that,” she says. “I was doing… what a suburban mother should. And that wasn’t enough. Not for either of you, really.”

“I don’t know, maybe not,” he says. “But I think I’m tired of people apologizing for not paying attention to me.”

“Oh, well, alright then,” she bites. “I’ll just shelve my guilt over not knowing my son was having a nervous breakdown, shall I?”

“Please,” he jokes softly.

“Good lord, Michael,” she says, but she’s laughing a little. “So you’re staying at home for now or… or what?”

“Yeah,” he says.

“You know, Jonathan went freelance,” Karen says. “He runs his business from home.”

“I’m not, uh,” Mike says, “I’m not doing that. I’m… I don’t know, I’m just…”

“Right. That’s alright too,” Karen murmurs. 

“I feel kind of bad for not having a job, but…”

“You live with two adults earning a full-time wage in a house with the mortgage half paid off,” she says. “You’ll be fine.”

“They said they don’t mind,” Mike mutters.

“Good. Oh, stir the onions.” He does, sort of relieved to have someone giving him instructions. “Just make sure you don’t get lonely at home, okay? And don’t have a third child to deal with the loneliness either.” He laughs, and after a moment, she says, “Don’t  _ ever _ tell Holly I said that.”

“I won’t,” he says. He and Holly haven’t had a full conversation since Easter at Nana’s. “Also, that’s not really a problem for any of us. Max has an IUD.”

“Oh, good,” Karen says.

“Do you wish you hadn’t had kids?” he asks.

“I wish I’d had you later,” she admits. “I wasn’t ready. Which… I’m sure you of all people can tell.”

“... Yeah,” he says. “Kind of.”

“You could get a dog instead.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he says. “Great advice from my mother. No kids, just a dog.”

“Jesus, Michael,” she says, again, sounding thoroughly exhausted. “Is the water boiling?”

He’s clearly still not firing on all cylinders because he tries to test it with his hand before he realizes that’s a bad idea.  _ “Fuck.” _

“What?” she asks.

“I stuck my finger in it.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Mike, you scared me! How bad is it?”

“Not bad, I noticed really fast.”

“Run it under cold water. God. Fuck.”

He laughs. “Language,” he teases.

“Don’t you  _ dare,  _ Michael!”

This is the first time in as long as he remembers that he’s actually had fun talking to his mother, he realizes. And that’s nice, even if Mike feels beyond exhausted.

~~**~~

“Holy shit, you made food?” Max asks. “It smells amazing.”

“It’s just spaghetti,” he says. “My mom’s sauce, though, so it’s pretty good.”

“You finally called her, huh?” Max asks. “How’d she take it?”

“Good,” he says. He means to add details, but he doesn’t get that far. Since he hung up the phone with his mother, the high of actually having a good conversation with her has faded into a drained, heavy low, leaving him with nothing to combat the exhaustion that seems to perch over him every day now.

“And you? You okay?” she asks.

He doesn’t want to answer, and clearly he struggles too long trying to figure out how to do so anyway, because she sits down on the couch next to him. 

Her voice is soft as she asks, “Mike?”

“No,” he says.

“No, you’re not alright?” she clarifies, taking his hand in her own.

He nods.

“Yeah, no shit,” she says, sitting him up with tender touches. “What happened?”

“Nothing happened!” he sobs. “Absolutely nothing happened and then… just… this!”

Sobs bubble up in his chest and he falls into muffled weeping, pressing his hand to his mouth, like that mass of exhaustion popped and turned out to be made of black, gooey despair that spreads through him.

“Baby,” she says, a habit she’s picked up from Lucas. “Hey. Maybe you just pushed yourself too hard today.”

“How was  _ this _ too hard?” he snaps at her. “I mean, which part of it was too much, getting out of bed or getting dressed or a five minute bike ride or trying to remember how shopping works even though I had a list in my hand or biking  _ back _ or making my food while trying to actually  _ talk _ to my mom at once or…”

“Mike, literally the fact that you made such a list of that makes it very clear that it was enough to overwhelm you,” she says.

“Well it shouldn’t!” he snarls. “It shouldn’t, okay? It shouldn’t be hard! I slept until noon and I didn’t get out of bed until two and then I spent like an hour making food and that’s too much? I didn’t even watch anything or read anything today because after the food was ready I just collapsed on the couch and I don’t even remember what the hell happened after that and…” A frantic warble chokes its way up his throat. “What the fuck!”

“Mike, you had a  _ breakdown,  _ remember?” Max says, firm but not unkind. “You are starting from square one. Okay? Now, you can ask your therapist how much to do at a time, but you’re going to struggle and it’s going to be baby steps.”

“I don’t want to do everything in baby steps!”

“Of course you don’t,” she sighs. “But you will. I… I did the same thing after Billy.”

Mike sniffles and peeks at her. “You did?”

“Yeah,” she says, sliding down onto the floor. He follows her. “The struggling to get out of bed? The… random crying? Yeah. I didn’t really have panic attacks, but I had nightmares. Way worse than I do now.”

“You didn’t say anything,” he mutters.

“Well, kind of hard to mourn your racist, abusive brother in front of you black boyfriend and his friends,” she says bitterly. “And it’s not like I liked Billy either. But… you know, he was… family, I guess? And sometimes I’d feel relieved he was gone, and that would feel so cruel. But then if I felt sorry for him, and… I don’t know, didn’t miss him, just… wished things had been different for him, from day one, then… then that was what I felt awful about.” She sighs. “Grief is bad enough, grief you can’t manage without hating yourself is… worse.”

He nods. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I… I noticed you were upset that year. I didn’t think it was so bad.”

“I talked it out with Lucas eventually,” she says. “And of course he understood, because…” She smiles so softly, Mike immediately understands. “I mean, of course he did. Anyway, yeah. It was really bad for a while. So… trust me, it’s going to take a while to get back up. But we’re here for you.”

Mike nods helplessly.

“So next time you have a grocery list, why don’t I come with you? Huh? I get home earlier than Lucas and we’ll buy food and I can even help you cook.”

Mike sniffles, wiping away tears. “This must be really hard for you,” he mumbles.

“How’s that?” she asks, tickling the back of his neck a little as she plays with his hair.

“Mocking me is your favorite pastime,” he says. “And now it would be too easy.”

She snorts. “It’s only fun if you’re in on it,” she says.

“Bullshit,” he gripes.

“Oh, come on, we have fun,” she says. “And we’ll get back to it when you’re back on your feet, okay?” She pulls his head into her shoulder like Lucas does and squeezes him tight. “‘Sides, Lucas is gonna cream his pants if he sees us just casually snuggling.”

“Grossest possible way to say he’ll be happy about the two people he loves getting along, but okay,” Mike mutters.

“See, you’re already more yourself,” Max says, laughing.

He rolls his eyes and nestles against her. “I liked calling my mom. I want to cook like this some more.”

“Okay,” Max says. “We’ll work up to it, alright?”

“Alright,” he agrees, resting his head on her shoulder.

She tells him about her day, about the lessons and the awful talk show her boss put on on the airport TV until he musters a few small chuckles.

Lucas gets back an hour later and beams at them the moment he sees them. “Are my babies getting along today?” he coos, rushing in to put a hand on each of their cheeks and plant kisses on both of them.

“This isn’t what it looks like, we’re actually wrestling,” Max protests. “Because we hate each other so much. Isn’t that right, Mike?”

“Mm,” Mike mumbles in sleepy agreement.

“Mhmm, sure,” Lucas says. “Sure seems like it.”

“Really can’t stand each other,” Mike mumbles, yawning.

“You look really miserable,” Lucas says, kissing the base of Mike’s neck so he shudders.

“Yeah,” Mike says. “I’m suffering.”

“He made food,” Max says. “Tired him out a little bit too much, but I’m very proud of him.”

“Thanks, Max, now I feel like a toddler!” Mike says.

She laughs. “Come on, let’s eat your hard work.”

“Mmmmnno,” Mike complains. “I wanna stay here.” He presses his head into her chest. “Your boobs are very soft.”

“Thanks,” she says. “Lucas, could you please get us food while I sit here with this six foot growth on my side?”

Lucas snorts. “Yeah, I’ve got it. Turn on PBS, Nova’s on tonight.” He kisses the top of her head and goes to get them food, while she uses her foot to turn on the TV.

The TV drones on about condors, and Mike relaxes into it.

~~**~~

He asks Lucas to wake him up and get him out of bed when they leave for work so he doesn’t sleep all day again, in the hopes that will help him be more awake. He immediately regrets it when Lucas wakes him by nosing at his face and kissing his nose. “Come on, you asked for it.”

Max snorts as she changes into work clothes.

“Noooo,” Mike whines. “No, I hate this, I take it back.”

“Come on, babe, give it a try,” Lucas says. “Hm? Just sit up, you can go back to sleep later.”

“No,” Mike mumbles, pulling his blankets over his head.

“Mike, baby,” Lucas asks, leaning over him teasingly. “Come on. One trial run, and if you don’t like it, I won’t wake you tomorrow.”

Mike groans at him pathetically.

“Come on, come shower with me,” Lucas says, dragging him out of the sweet embrace of his blankets.

Max bursts out laughing. “He looks like a cat you’re trying to put in the bath,” she says. “So grumpy.” She pinches Mike’s cheek, only more entertained by the glare he gives her.

Lucas drags Mike to the edge of the bed, where Mike sits, legs splayed out in front of him like a petulant child, and refuses to move.

“I can’t carry you in my arms right now,” Lucas says, showing Mike the cast on his arm, like Mike’s forgotten. “So if you won’t stand, I’m throwing you over my shoulders.”

“Fine,” Mike mutters.

“Okay,” Lucas says, shrugging and pulling Mike over his shoulders, arms and legs dangling at Lucas’s sides. “Comfy?”

“Very,” Mike says, mostly to be contrary, but also because Lucas has nice, padded shoulders at this point from a few years of slinging around massive hoses and working out, and it is not at all bad to be draped over them like a bag of potatoes.

It proves to be a challenge when Lucas tries to put him down on the side of the tub without putting tension on his arm, so Mike has to give up his petulant act and help.

He rubs at his eyes and helps Lucas tape a bag onto the cast to keep it dry. “Can’t believe you take morning showers,” Mike mutters, wrestling his shirt off. “Gross.”

“You only say that because you like to sleep in,” Lucas says, spinning Mike around to press him into the tub. “But now you don’t have to get ready for work, so you can shower with me and take your sweet time having breakfast or napping or anything you want.”

_ That _ sounds nice. Max is going to be upset he’s abandoned Team Night Showers, but…

Lucas turns on the water, and Mike doesn’t know if the water is just right or if he’s just pleased at the fact that when he stoops to get his head in the water, Lucas’s shoulder is readily available to put his forehead on.

Lucas giggles. “You’re  _ so _ tall.”

“Mm,” Mike says, happily letting the water rush down his back as he noses at Lucas’s shoulder.

“Not so bad, now, huh?” Lucas teases.

“Yeah, this is nice.”

Lucas laughs. “Want me to wash you?”

“Mhmm,” Mike says, grabbing the soap and handing it to Lucas, sighing softly as calloused, soapy fingers glide over his back. He has to lift his own head for a bit while Lucas gets his legs, but he’s back soon to provide headrest services.

Mike reaches for the soap and Lucas hands it over, letting Mike wash his back too. “Jesus, that tickles,” Lucas says.

“I’m not even doing anything,” Mike says, and cautiously kneels to get Lucas’s legs. As it turns out, standing up is the real struggle, because he’s barely up on one knee before he’s sliding down again, and Lucas has to catch him, laughing at him as he drags him back to his feet.

Mike quirks a smile at that, letting Lucas hold him steady, his hand strong on Mike’s arm as he brings him back to Lucas’s shoulder. 

“Today I’m going to try to actually switch the tapes when they run out,” Mike declares. It had felt more heroic in his head, after weeks of simply staring numbly at the static when the movie he was watching ended.

“That’s it, baby,” Lucas murmurs.

_ “And _ I’m going to open the door myself when Dustin comes for lunch.”

“Oooh, tough guy, huh?” Lucas chuckles. When Mike pouts at him, he softens. “No, seriously, that seems like a good goal for the day.”

He lets Mike rest on his shoulder in comfortable silence for another few minutes before he shakes him gently. “I have to go to work.”

Mike whines at him, but he reluctantly releases Lucas to let him turn off the water.

It’s cold in the bathroom without the hot water, and Mike stands there, sleepy and wet and shivering until Lucas tosses a towel into his face.

But then he also takes Mike’s hand along with the towel and helps him dry his face with gentle strokes, so Mike figures they’re even.

Lucas also walks him back to his room and helps him button his shirt and slip on a sweater, which is more of a relief than Mike would have thought. He also helps Mike button and zip his jeans, which doesn’t help at all, but the wink he gives him makes Mike laugh, so Mike supposes he’ll allow it.

“Hey, Casanova, you’re supposed to get his pants  _ off _ before looking so smug about it,” Max teases. “I made coffee.”

“But then I’d be late for work,” Lucas fires back, kissing a sensitive spot on Mike’s neck to make him shudder and duck out of the room before he starts blushing hard.

~~**~~

After Lucas and Max head out, Mike watches Twister, then ends up turning off the TV so he can take a nap, which he thinks counts towards his goal. And then he watches some PBS, which feels a little bit like cheating, but he does actually pay attention to it, even though it’s entirely kids shows at the moment, because most adults are all still at work.

But when Dustin rings the doorbell, Mike turns off the TV and gets the door.

Dustin stares at him, caught halfway between getting his key and registering Mike’s presence. “Wow!” he says a few beats later, never one to be deterred from cheer for long. “Look at you!”

“Let’s go,” Mike says, feeling a high he hasn’t in a long while at his success.

“Mike,” Dustin says, catching him and walking him back inside. “Shoes?”

“Shoes,” Mike says, refusing to let this put a damper on his mood. He slips on his sneakers and looks at Dustin. “Okay.”

“Yeah, woo!” Dustin says, shaking his shoulders. “There we go!”

“Burrito as big as your head?” Mike asks.

“I mean, sure, but I can’t look Lucas in the eyes and tell him I made his boyfriend puke for the second time now, so…” Dustin says.

“They have those little taco things.”

“You mean tacos?”

“No, they’re flat.”

“But they’re… still tacos.”

“No, tacos aren’t flat!”

“It’s just a soft tortilla! You fold it!”

“What?!”

“It’s a fucking taco, Mike!”

“It’s  _ not _ a taco.”

“Oh my god you’re unbearable.”

~~**~~

When Dustin drops him off at home, he doesn’t feel like TV anymore. He tries to reread Lord of the Rings (because he’s pretty sure Gollum wasn’t a hobbit and he wants to prove Lucas wrong) but he can’t focus past one page.

So he switches to reading Matilda, which is much easier to concentrate on, but somehow he still falls asleep on the couch reading it before Max gets home. She tiptoes inside, clearly trying not to wake him, but the door already dragged him out of sleep.

He sits up, yawning.

“Hey,” she says. “How’d today go?”

“Baby steps,” he says.

“You look better.”

He smiles a little at that. “Yeah, I think today was good.”

“Lucas is so going to drag your sorry ass into the shower with him every morning from now on,” she laughs.

Mike sighs. “I think I’ll live with it.”

“Yeah, life is real hard for you, buddy,” she laughs, ruffling his hair. “What are you not reading?”

“Matilda,” he replies.

“Gimme,” she says, holding out her hands and bullying her way onto the couch next to him. “I’ll read to you, just don’t drool on me if you fall asleep.”

“Well now I have to drool on you,” Mike replies.

“Dickhead.”

They stay like that, Max reading to him and Mike somehow staying awake, until Lucas gets home.

“Hey, you look better today,” Lucas says. “Was it the morning shower?” He waggles his brows.

“No,” Max and Mike groan at once.

“It waaaas,” Lucas coos.

“Ugh,” Mike says.

“You up for a walk?” Lucas asks. “I’ve been behind a desk all day, I need to stretch my legs.”

Mike yawns. “Yeah, okay.”

They take a stroll around Bryan park, at which point Mike is yawning every other breath. He somehow nods his way through eating some leftover spaghetti while Lucas and Max chat around him, Lucas occasionally squeezing his elbow.

He helps them pack away the dishes, then flops down on the couch and closes his eyes.

He dozes in and out and listens to Max and Lucas talking. He’s pretty sure they’re talking about him, serious stuff in hushed voices, but mostly he’s just glad to hear their voices.

Lucas wakes him a little later with a gentle tap. “Hey,” he says. “You up for a talk?”

“What kind of talk?” Mike asks, peering at him.

“About me going back to active duty,” Lucas asks.

“Oh,” Mike says. He doesn’t like it, but so far he doesn’t think he’s panicking.

Lucas scoops him up and deposits him in his lap, and Max shuffles in beside them, pulling Mike’s feet into her lap. “So, the cast comes off next week. Depending on what the doctor says, I’ll probably go back to active duty the week after that. Until then, it’s desk duty and some work around headquarters.”

Mike nods slowly.

“So, I’d start that Monday,” Lucas says. “24 hours on, 48 off. But we’re thinking that on my on days, Max will shuffle her hours around so she can be back around lunch and that way maybe with some time together before bed, you’ll be able to sleep.”

Mike nestles his face into Lucas’s throat. Max rubs his shin comfortingly. “I guess so.”

“Yeah? How do you feel about it?” Lucas asks.

“I mean, fine for now,” Mike mutters. “I don’t think I’ll know until it happens.”

“Yeah,” Lucas murmurs. “Try not to overthink it, okay? Just focus on what you’re doing now.”

“Answering the door sometimes?” Mike asks with a small smile.

“Important stuff,” Max teases.

Mike breathes out a slow, slow breath. 

“But,” Max says. “We’re gonna take this weekend to do stuff that’ll make you feel a bit better about it. So if you have anything in mind…”

Mike snorts. “Actually,” he says, “and you’re not allowed to laugh,  _ Max.” _

“Damn.”

“I have an idea.”

~~**~~

“Wow, Michael,” Max says. “Wow.”

“No laughing, Maxine.”

_ “Michael.” _

_ “Maxine.” _

_ “Michael!” _

Lucas shushes them.

“Sorry Lucas,” they both mumble.

“You guys are savages,” Lucas says.

Mike laughs.

“Lucas,” Max says, turning wide eyes on him. “How am I not supposed to laugh? Your boyfriend is reading a book about guinea pigs.”

“This is a masterpiece,” Mike says, showing her the inside of the picture book where a guinea pig has been dressed up as a tiger. “How dare you.”

“You’re an actual toddler,” she replies, trying to stifle a grin. 

He grins at her.

“Hey, he stressed his brain into goo, it’s not his fault he’s been set back a few reading levels,” Lucas says.

“Just a few,” Mike gripes.

The Monroe County Public Library is a lot nicer than the Hawkins library. In no small part because the librarians here don’t remember the several times when Dustin stole a bunch of books, or the time Lucas and Mike started yelling at each other over whether or not Aslan was supposed to be Jesus or not, or the time when Will somehow knocked over a whole shelf while trying to hide from Harriet Burgess, who had decided he needed a better haircut and she, with her rounded art scissors, was the one to give it to him.

But also it’s big and bright and there are always things going on in the auditorium inside it, and the shelves are colorful and the children’s section has nice chairs, which they’re currently using so Mike can revel in the easiest possible reading.

“I think it’s nice, rereading kids stuff,” Lucas says. “I mean, Dr. Seuss is worth the reread, but it’s not like I’ve even picked up a Seuss book in years.”

“Mhmm,” Mike says. “It’s fun. And I like not losing my concentration the moment I try to read for more than two pages.”

“Goo brain,” Max retorts, but she hooks her chin over Lucas’s shoulder to read Fox in Socks with him.

“See if I’m nice to you when you have a nervous breakdown of your own.”

_ “When?” _

“You guys are both just about as good at taking care of yourselves emotionally,” Lucas remarks.

“Excuse me?” Max says, sitting up in affront.

“Ha,” Mike laughs. “You’re down here on my level.”

“I am  _ not,” _ she says, turning up her nose.

Mike snorts and sets down the guinea pig book. “Okay, let’s hit the young adult section for something easy and then we can go eat.”

“How about Jimmy John’s?” Max suggests.

“No,” Lucas says vehemently. “That’s white people food.”

“How is it white people food?” Mike asks.

“It’s just a bunch of cold cuts slammed into bread,” Lucas complains. “How is that a restaurant?”

“They have those giant pickles, though!” Max protests. 

“What is it with you guys and those pickles? A pickle is not a meal!”

Mike snorts. “Alright, where do you wanna eat?”

“The Irish place downtown,” Lucas says.

“Lucas,  _ how _ is that not white people food?” Max asks.

“Not food made by white people,  _ white people food,” _ Lucas says, slowly, like she doesn’t know how to follow his sentences.

“That’s okay, I like downtown,” Mike says.

“Alright, let’s get your baby books and go there, then,” Max teases.

“Lucas, tell her she promised not to make fun of me.”

“Snitch.”

“You did promise, Max.”

“This is favoritism.”

Mike blows a raspberry at her.

“Very mature,” Max says. “Definitely proving me wrong about your baby books.”

That makes Mike laugh.

~~**~~

On Sunday, Mike curls up in Lucas’s lap and finishes an entire book by himself.

It feels oddly triumphant, especially since the book is recommended for 12 year olds, but still. It’s a success.

On Monday, he’s alone in the house and he keeps giving up on the second book in order to stare at the ceiling, so he cleans the stove until Dustin comes and gets him for lunch, and then he manages to read until Max gets home. 

“Up for some shopping?” she asks.

“I think so,” he says cautiously. “Let me call my mom.”

He dials her number and waits for the dial tone. “Holly Wheeler,” comes the voice.

Mike smiles to himself. “Hey, Holly. It’s Mike.”

“Oh, hi Mike,” she replies.

“How’s high school?” he asks.

“It’s cool,” she replies. “I made it on the cheerleading team.”

“Wow,” he says. “Congrats.” Holly is so unlike him or Nancy, he doesn’t know what to do with it.

“Want me to get Mom?” Holly asks.

“Yeah, please,” he replies, listening to her hum and call for Karen.

After a moment, Karen takes the phone. “Hi Mike. How are you today?”

“Okay,” he murmurs. “Uh, we ran out of spaghetti, so…”

“Alright, how are you feeling today?” she asks.

“Um,” he manages. “I mean, Max is going to take me shopping in the car, so… I’ll be less tired.”

“Hi Karen!” Max calls.

“Hi Max,” Karen replies.

“She says hi,” Mike mouths.

“Alright, you know what? Let’s try a casserole. Once you put it all together you can throw it in the oven and set a timer and that’s that.”

“Yeah,” Mike says. “Okay.”

He notes down the list, and Max drives him over to Kroger’s.

The sprinklers come on just as they get there. “See?” he says, pointing at it. “It’s so easy to get drawn into!”

“What, the broccoli?” she asks.

“No! They play Singing in the Rain! To the vegetables!” he says. “That’s so cool!”

“What exactly do you think cool means?” she asks, grinning.

“It’s… Fine, it’s  _ cute,” _ he sighs.

“How long did you stand here watching these vegetables be serenaded?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” he says helplessly.

She laughs, but not with any bite. “Oh, Mike.”

“Don’t do that,” he says. “I don’t want pity.”

“It’s not pity,” she replies. “I promise. I’m just… I don’t know, I wish you felt better.” 

She gestures at him to bend down, and he does. She sticks a Kroger sticker on his forehead.

“Thanks,” he says.

“You’re welcome,” she replies.

He leaves it on until Lucas comes home to find Mike with the phone pressed to his ear with his shoulder while he layers cheese over the casserole.

“That’s a good look on you,” he says, kissing the sticker.

“Thank you,” Mike says, and feels absurdly happy when Lucas pulls away with a smile and his mother continues to explain how long the casserole needs to bake.

On Tuesday, he finishes his book, and when Dustin arrives, they go to the library to pick up some books for sixteen year olds and eat casserole outside the library on the bear-shaped benches that Dustin thinks are the most amazing piece of modern art known to man.

On Wednesday, Dustin takes him to Kroger’s and Mike buys ingredients for a few different meals, and he doesn’t get through any books but he does cook food for the next few days without ending up sobbing on the floor after.

On Thursday, Will comes to visit, still slightly covered in paint.

Mike proudly shows him the food stocked up in the fridge. “I know it doesn’t feel like much, but this is a big deal for me,” he says. “Also, don’t look at the dishes.”

Will smiles and nods indulgently. “What dishes?”

Mike grins. “Anyway,” he says. “Screw that, my life is boring lately. I sleep half the day and its a triumph if I can get the door by myself.”

“Which you did,” Will says.

“I did!” Mike says proudly. “But come on, you must be nervous about that gallery opening!”

“I’m good,” Will says. “I’m here for you.”

“It opens on Monday,” Mike says. “I mean, come on.”

“Sure, I’m nervous,” Will says. “But you’ve talked me though like a dozen of these, I can handle this one on my own.”

Mike doesn’t really understand the spike of frustration that rushes though him. “You’re only saying that because I…” He doesn’t want to mention the nervous breakdown. Not to Will. He’s not sure if it’s because he feels silly calling it that to Will, who’s had to deal with all kinds of  _ episodes _ since middle school, or because he doesn’t want to worry Will.

But Will knows what he means and he just shrugs. “I mean, yeah. You’ve gotten me through a bunch of these, now you need some rest. It’s not any kind of judgement.” He spreads out his hand like he’s showing off an exhibit. “If anything, it’s because you’ve been so good at being there for me before. I already know what you’re going to say.”

“Yeah, me too, so why can’t I just say it!” Mike snaps, far more aggressive than he’d meant.

Will doesn’t shy away from him, though, just keeps his cool and looks him in the eyes. “Because you shouldn’t be putting me first now. I barely got in the door and you started trying to make it all about me. And… honestly I’m okay. I like coming to you because you’re comforting, but… I don’t need it.”

Mike’s shoulders drop, the fight draining out of him. He doesn’t even know why it was a fight in the first place. “I… But everything’s been about me lately,” he says. “I’m just tired of it. Everyone’s treating me like glass, and it sucks. And I  _ always _ talk you through the jitters.”

“Mike,” Will says, sounding amused. “Trust me, I of all people know. But you’re not okay. And… I know that from personal experience too.”

Mike wants to curl in on himself and die. “I know that,” he mumbles.

Will laughs softly. “You know, when you said we’d go crazy together, I didn’t think you meant you’d procrastinate it for ten years, but… I can’t say I’m surprised.”

“Shut up,” Mike mumbles. “Jesus, that was  _ before _ I saw everyone in that lab die.”

“Uh, yeah,” Will says. “Exactly.”

“I hate when you’re assertive,” Mike mutters.

Will rolls his eyes. “You and your ego.”

“It’s not my ego!” Mike protests.

Will just raises his brows. He doesn’t bicker like Lucas does. Mike feels sort of off balance without it. “Okay, look,” Will says. “I know it’s frustrating when everyone starts treating you differently, so… I will allow you a little bit of comforting.”

“Okay,” Mike mumbles under his breath.

“I am a little jittery,” Will says patiently. “There’s going to be a really famous critic from LA at the opening.”

“You’ll be fine,” Mike says lamely. “They’ll love it. Just remember to actually talk to people.”

“I will,” Will says, nodding happily.

Mike feels really, profoundly insufficient at that. “Um,” he says, and there’s tears streaming down his face. “Shit.”

“I  _ told _ you,” Will says, patting his knee. “I know it sucks that things change when you’re not okay. But… the more you try to force it back to what it was, the more it rattles you when anything goes wrong.”

“Yeah,” Mike manages, a sob rattling up his throat. “I’m so sorry about that summer and…”

“Mike,” Will laughs. “We were fourteen.”

Mike cocks his head in a cknowledgement. “Yeah, but…”

“Don’t worry,” Will says. “I know you’ve always tried to be a good friend, and, honestly, you are one. And I know you’re here for me and I know when you can, you’ll be willing to give it your all. Maybe even… a little too much.”

“Maybe,” Mike admits. Will pulls up his chair and sits up onto his foot so he can put an arm around Mike. “But um… I mean, I don’t just want to be a useless lump here.”

“Tell me more about how you’re dealing with this stuff,” Will says. “What you’ve figured out for yourself, and maybe I can give you some tips of my own.”

Mike sighs. “Yeah, okay.”

On Friday, the cast comes off. Will draws an entire mural onto it before it’s sliced off. 

The skin under it is still a little raw looking, the vague imprints of mostly healed burns still present, and Lucas spends most of the day scratching like he’s got fleas until Max and Mike can’t keep from giggling about it.

On Saturday, they go to the small science museum in a little hole in the strip mall downtown, and spend several hours messing around with every single experiment there, and in the evening, Will drives back to Indianapolis.

On Sunday, Mike spends the whole day spaced out, trying to decide how he feels about Lucas going back to active duty.

On Monday, Lucas’s 24 hour shift starts in the morning, and Mike gets up to shower with him, eats a piece of toast for breakfast and then goes back to bed and tries to read his book, sentence by scattered sentence, until Max gets home.

He’s almost relieved that she looks twitchy too. They put on some X-men cartoons, eat leftovers and stay curled up together watching TV until they both finally fall asleep around four in the morning and sleep - slightly fitfully - through the night until Lucas comes home and it’s time for Max to go to work.

All in all, Mike thinks it’s okay. His routine is a little rattled, he didn’t do much yesterday, but it’s okay. He and Lucas play video games and read while cuddling for all of Tuesday, and Mike almost convinces himself he’s fine, he’s walked it off.

And then Tuesday night hits, and it all goes to hell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i was gonna end this chapter with a cat when i was outlining, but instead i somehow just went "what if instead it was a cliffhanger" bc above all i am simply bastard


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings for this chapter: a lot of panic attacks, talking about hypothetical death and actual canon deaths and also i tried to avoid making these talks ominous but became ominous anyway so rest assured: i will not be killing lucas in this or any other fics bc good LORD that would be bleak. and also mildly sexual content

He’s trapped.

That’s the only thing he’s positive about, because everything else is positively Lovecraftian in its lack of clarity. There’s screaming  _ everywhere,  _ fire crashing around him and massive creatures pounce around in the inferno, sleek and predatory and focused - they won’t stop, not until they take everything from him, every single person and thing he holds dear, until they tear his heart to shreds like they tear everything else apart into slivers of blood and gore.

He can scream and cry all he wants (and he does) but he knows no one’s coming. Everyone’s dead or gone (he doesn’t know which, because he sees the corpses but he can’t trust his own shifting, spinning mind) or they’re just not listening, and Mike’s screams and pleas for help are swallowed up by the dark, thoughtless silence.

And then, suddenly, they’re way too loud, in his ears and echoing back in the soft glow of their beside lamp and he knows,  _ knows _ that it was just a dream and he’s awake and safe now but it’s all too much and he’s so used to bottling it all up and quashing it into sulking and silence that he thinks it’s clawed apart his insides - like those things, those dogs, teeth tearing and tearing - that he just looks Lucas in the eyes and keeps screaming, a visceral, whimpering noise punctuated by frantic sobs.

And Lucas just picks him up and muffles it with his shoulder (probably for the best - the houses here are spaced out well enough to make room for gardens and trees, but he is being awfully loud) and rocks him, petting his head while Mike tries to express a decade’s worth of desperation and neglect in something like a wail.

“He’s awake,” Lucas whispers to Max, and her softer hands are brushing Mike’s hair out of his face like she’s trying to hold it out of the way, which is how Mike realizes he’s gagging and dry heaving. “Sssh, baby, it’s okay.”

“No!” Mike snarls with a desperation he didn’t know he had. “No it’s not, it’s  _ not.” _

Lucas laughs a little, but it sounds like mostly adrenaline. “Whatever makes you feel better.”

And Mike sobs harder, over all of it, all at once, until he struggles to breathe. 

Max and Lucas prop him up between them both, like a sling, both syncing their breathing with Lucas’s loud, performative breaths as he presses his nose to Mike’s and Max repeats, “In… out…” until Mike’s body can listen.

Mike scrambles to find something to push out of his mouth, something to focus on instead of a long line of watching El die, and then being left alone to mourn  _ (or not mourn?) _ and then watching Will’s terror and successive slipping away into something sinister and otherworldly and then the gunfire and blood and then the dark room and breathless wait for Bob to get the power back on and then the steady march past all the corpses and the scuff of blood he’d later found on the bottom of his shoe and then watching Hopper drag Joyce screaming from the building and knowing  _ Bob’s not coming, Bob’s not coming, Bob’s gone and El’s gone and we’re next  _ and having to push it aside to push Joyce into the car because Hopper was busy lifting Will and what if Will was gone and then sending El back into the building and sitting still until Billy disrupted it all by trying to kill Lucas and then after all of it, after  _ everything,  _ Hopper threatening to take El away and the ensuing blur of fucking up and trying to get her back and then losing his grip on Will and then trying to explain to them all that she could die, that people  _ die, they die and die and die and then and then and then _

“I fucking told you, Max,” he sobs. “That summer, I told you, and you didn’t listen to me, no one  _ listened _ to me.” The second it’s out of his mouth, he regrets it, because that’s not the point, it’s just the branch that went fastest in this awful, sprawling mess of lightning-like panic that’s flashing through him, leaving his muscles fizzing and twitching.

She slides her hand over his and laces their fingers together to squeeze tight, pushing her face into the crook of his neck. “I know,” she says. “I’m sorry, but I’m here now, I’m listening now.”

“It’s okay,” he says. “That’s not what I meant, you were just being there for El, I don’t know why…”

“It’s alright,” she murmurs. “It’s alright, you can complain, I won’t take it personally.”

“I don’t  _ want _ to complain!” he shouts, and she laughs into his throat, and he laughs with her helplessly, because he loves Max and she always makes him laugh and she and Lucas are squeezing him so tightly and he sees hope on the horizon of feeling safe here with them if they just don’t move. He doesn’t know what will happen when inevitably they have to move, but if he thinks about it it threatens to break him, so he doesn’t. “It’s not you, it’s all the… it’s everything.”

“I know,” Max says. “But this is the one thing I can help with. I’m sorry I wasn’t patient with you that summer. I didn’t know you yet.”

“That was my fault,” he mutters.

“Well, obviously,” she teases. “But it’s okay. It’s okay to be angry.”

“I don’t want to be angry,” he lies. “Not at you.”

Max sighs, shifting so she can mull over the words she wants to say. “I don’t want you to be angry with me either,” she says. “But I want you to trust me to be okay if you’ve got to be angry for a bit, because…” She pauses for a moment, then says, “Because I trust you to be angry with me in a caring way. Not violent and unfair, just… y’know. Just getting shit off your chest so we can be there for one another, I guess.”

He blinks, mulling it over. He knows where she’s coming from. He knows that there’s a very big gesture in her, of all people, saying she  _ trusts him  _ to be angry and not hurt her, after everything she’s gone through with Billy and Neil. It’s so moving for a moment he thinks he’s gotten over his outburst entirely, but then he’s tearing up and in the most pitiful voice he manages, “You made me sound like an  _ asshole.  _ For being  _ scared.” _

“Okay, yeah, I did do that,” she says, amused. “But in my defense, I thought you were, and my main source of advice at the time was Cosmo.”

“Which was rough,” Lucas teases.

“Uh, shut up,” Max teases back, both of them glancing at Mike to see if he’s managing well enough for them to bicker. He sniffles, relieved at the distraction from his own problems. “Are you sobbing like a little baby? No. It’s Mike’s turn to complain.”

“Oh, what, I can’t point out what a minefield it was to date you while you were trying to learn how to be a ‘strong independent woman’ from a magazine that sold diet pills?” Lucas says.

“Oh, I’m sorry, did  _ you _ have to navigate the delicate balance that is growing up a girl with a sense of pride in the 80s?” Max gripes.

“Yeah, because growing up  _ black _ in the 80s was  _ so _ easy,” Lucas says.

“I will grant you that, but it’s a totally different set of difficulties,” Max says. “And therefore you cannot judge me for not know how to strike a balance between being self-assured as a girl and maybe, a little bit, playing mindgames with your loving boyfriend by accident.”

“Like hell I  _ can’t,” _ Lucas says. “You once broke up with me for saying you have a pointy chin.”

“That was very clearly a joke.”

“You think an insecure 14 year old could know that?”

“Since I was joking every single time and we were back together in seconds, uh,  _ yeah?  _ Admit it, you liked making a big deal out of it and winning me back, you showy little jackass.”

“Excuse  _ you,” _ Lucas says. “I did  _ not.” _

“Did too,” Max says.

“Did not!”

“That year when I didn’t know if El was alive or dead and I didn’t know if I was losing it or if she was gone, my parents made me sell a bunch of my toys for acting out,” he says. They both stop short, staring at him like they can’t tell how seriously to take this. “And uh… and it… was like, hard.” He blinks away tears. “Just in case, you know, you guys needed to be reminded that the real villain is white men, or… you know.” He swallows down the lump in his throat.

“Mike, it’s not unreasonable to feel sad about losing your things after losing someone,” Lucas says. “Besides, I know you, you give your toys names.”

“Yeah,” Mike chokes out.

“Yeah, that’s not…” Max says. “Jeez, everyone just has a habit of kicking you when you’re down, huh?”

“It’s never even on  _ purpose,” _ Mike blurts out. “And that  _ sucks. _ I can’t even  _ blame  _ anyone.”

“I believe Max volunteered herself as a scapegoat,” Lucas jokes.

“No, I’m done,” Mike says. “I’m done being mad at Max. You’ve done enough since to make up for… being fourteen? You don’t even have anything to make up for!”

“Well, I’m glad you’re being so passionately defensive of me,” Max laughs.

“I’m sorry I was a shithead to you when we first met,” Mike said. “I was mad about you not being El and… I don’t know, in retrospect I was probably just mad Lucas liked you.”

“Probably?” Max says. “You definitely were.”

Lucas grins down at him. “Aw, sweetheart, were you upset I wasn’t all about you?”

“Leave me alone,” Mike mumbles.

Lucas happily kisses all over his face, which is, technically, what Mike really wanted, but he can’t admit that.

“Wanna yell about our other friends?” Max asks. “I think that’s helping you.”

_ “Yes,” _ Mike snaps. “Dustin kept a goddamn demodog even though he knew it was from the Upside Down! And Will kept shittalking El after she risked her own ass trying to save his life, what the fuck?! I know he was gay and traumatized,” Lucas opens his mouth to point out that that’s more than enough to deal with, and Mike glares at him, because he  _ knows, he knows, _ “but it wasn’t  _ just _ my fault that we argued over it! I thought he just thought girls were dumb, he didn’t even  _ tell _ me he didn’t like them like  _ that! _ And El… El dumped me for lying to her  _ one time. _ One! Time!”

“I mean, I told her to,” Max says.

“I  _ know,  _ but you didn’t know what we’d been through before that! She lied to us about where the gate was! Will could have died! She nearly killed Lucas! I said I couldn’t make it  _ one single time _ because Hopper  _ locked me in a car _ and said I’d never see her again if I didn’t stop making out with her all the time, and right away she dumps me?! I sheltered her in my home for a week when we barely knew her!” he yells. “And yes, I  _ know _ she was isolated from society and she needed to find her own footing but why did it have to  _ suck?” _

Max pats his knee, nodding along with him indulgently, and Lucas tries not to lose it into his shoulder with strangled giggles.

“And no one,” he sobs, and this part he actually means, “fucking told me I was traumatized!”

Max and Lucas sober up quickly.

“And I  _ know _ I should have known that about myself,” he manages between hiccups and tears, “but why didn’t anyone fucking tell me? Why didn’t anyone  _ do _ anything?”

They both nod, like they understand.

“I’m sorry we didn’t notice,” Lucas says.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Mike manages.

“We both know that,” Max says, and Lucas nods in a way where Mike knows he means it, and he’s so, so relieved that they’re both the kind of people not to place all the blame on their own shoulders, like he probably would. They just rub his back and stay there, calm and steady.

“We’re just sorry,” Lucas says. “Just in general.”

“Yeah,” Max says, her nose pressing against Mike’s collarbone while Lucas’s lips press against his forehead.

“Don’t tell any of the others I said that stuff,” Mike says. “I didn’t… you know, mean it. In like, a relevant way.”

They both nod again.

They all lay there for a while, half asleep, Lucas thumbing at Mike’s neck and Max draping herself over him.

“Think you can go back to sleep?” Lucas murmurs after Mike’s stopped crying and has segued into sniffling softly.

“I don’t know,” Mike says. “You can turn off the light.”

“Wake me, okay?” Lucas says. “If you need me.”

He shuts off the light and manhandles Mike into being the little spoon, Maxw wrapping around them from the other side.

Mike feels cozy for a moment before he realizes he has to close his eyes to sleep, and his stomach flips.

Images of death and blood and all his loved ones gone rise in the back of his mind and he knows if he closes his eyes they’ll become that much clearer.

He tries not to panic, breathing slowly and steadily and staring into the dark room until Lucas’s breathing evens out, followed by Max’s. And then he lays there, waiting for the night to end, small shivers running up his body every so often.

He knows he should wake Lucas, but he can’t. He’s scared to move, to do anything that might move either of them even a hair’s breadth further from him.

Somehow, though, between laying awake, terrified of closing his eyes and the sunrise, he falls asleep, and wakes up shaking and sweaty and grabbing for Lucas because his arms aren’t around Mike anymore and he’s  _ gone he’s gone he’s gone _ …

Of course, he didn’t go far, sitting right next to Mike with a mug of coffee he has to frantically set down on the nightstand to grab Mike’s flailing arms as he panics, his whole body cramping with some kind of crushing adrenal response, and Mike, in some corner of his brain, knows it, but he can’t  _ stop.  _ He clutches at Lucas, sobbing, and pulls him in, grasping at his clothes, his hair, anything he can find.

“I’m here, I’m here,” Lucas murmurs. “I’m here, baby.”

“I need more,” Mike chokes out.

“More what?” Lucas asks.

“Just  _ more!” _ Mike sobs, unable to determine it himself, much less tell Lucas.

“Okay,” Lucas says. “Uh…” He thinks about it, and then pushes Mike down onto the bed and lays on him.

It’s so odd, Mike stops crying to be startled.

Lucas settles his weight onto Mike, pinning his arms over his chest. “How’s that feel?”

The weight is nice. Lucas’s scent and warmth surround him like this. Mike blinks, tears rolling down his cheeks as his body slowly relaxes into it. “Good,” he says.

“Hang on,” Lucas says, and starts to get up. 

Mike panics again, so bad this time that his vision whites out and he’s blind, helpless, unable to drag in a breath.

“Hey, hey, I’m still here,” Lucas says, his hand on Mike’s jaw. “Sssh, baby, Mike, I’m here.”

Mike slowly manages to pull in a few breaths, head spinning and shivering all over.

“Yeah,” Lucas says, slowly turning Mike around and pulling his legs down until he’s flat on his belly before laying on him, slotting their bodies together to Mike feels truly covered. The pressure is nice, though he thinks Lucas is keeping himself up a little with his elbows so Mike can keep breathing.

“There you go,” he says, as Mike’s breathing evens out, slowly pushing the rest of his weight onto Mike’s back to practically steamroll him into the bed. “There. Sssssh.”

“Someone’s a happy pancake,” Max says, settling into bed with a mug of her own.

“Shouldn’t you be at work?” Mike wheezes.

“Called in sick,” Max said. “Heard you breathing like an asthmatic all night while I was dozing in and out and I figure you might need some more TLC today. And cancelled on Dustin, because I thought you might need some time just us.”

“Yeah,” Mike admits. “Thanks.”

“This good for you, being squished?” she asks.

“Yeah,” he says.

“Oh, good,” she says. “Lucas, you wanna play some checkers?”

“First, breakfast,” Lucas says. “I’m going to move, don’t panic, okay?”

“Okay,” Mike says.

Lucas rolls off of him, and Mike, naturally, panics.

He doesn’t mean to. He almost sees it happen as if to someone else, the rush of fear when he draws in too big a breath and his chest expands more than it had been able to, and comes out a muffled whimper and then a sob.

“Okay, ssh, sh,” Lucas says, dragging him into his arms. “You said you’d be okay, you big liar.”

“I don’t know what fucking happened!” Mike whimpers.

“In… out…” Max says, sounding playfully bored.

Mike gives her a cross look and does it, and the shivering dies down again.

Lucas moves to haul him into his arms and Mike shakes his head quickly. “You shouldn’t strain your arm yet.”

Lucas almost argues, but Mike’s still shaking like a leaf and clearly he doesn’t have the heart to do it.  _ “Fine,” _ he gripes. “Max?”

“I get it now, this is all a conspiracy to make me serve you breakfast,” Max jokes, but she leaves and returns with a bowl of cereal.

“You got me, I’ve been faking panic attacks so I don’t have to pour my own cereal,” Mike says, letting Lucas pull him into his side

She snorts and hands him a spoon.

His hands are shaking too badly to feed himself. “Fuck,” he whispers.

“I got it,” Lucas says patiently, taking the spoon and bowl out of Mike’s hands and lifting it to his mouth. Mike takes the bite without protest, feeling very small and stupid.

Lucas shakes him a little, arm firm around his shoulders, and keeps spooning cereal into his mouth. Mike looks up at him bashfully, and Lucas grins. “I mean,” he says, “I think we always knew it would come to this.”

“How’s that?” Mike mutters.

“You’ve always been kind of useless,” Lucas says. “I kind of figured you’d fall down some stairs and I’d end up spoon feeding you in the hospital.”

“You planned to spoon feed me in the hospital when we were kids?” Mike asks, raising a brow.

“Actually, yeah, a little,” Lucas admits. “Before Erica got to be such a thorn in my side, she wanted to play doctor and house a lot and I guess I kinda liked the thought of it.”

“You’ve literally had a crush on Mike for like your whole life, huh?” Max teases.

_ “No,” _ Lucas protests. “Okay, maybe, but at that point it was because I kind of wanted to be a rescue guy and I figured… if anyone in life was gonna need some rescuing, it was gonna be Mike.”

“I’m both insulted and flattered,” Mike says.

“He was your damsel,” Max coos. “So romantic.”

“Shush,” Lucas says. “That wasn’t… it wasn’t romantic back then!”

“So really,” Mike says, “by being such a disaster, I’m doing a service to you.”

“Yeah, sure buddy,” Lucas says.

Mike grins.

Lucas just sighs at him and stuffs his face to shut him up, and then Mike’s being manhandled back onto his belly so Lucas can lay on him, pressing a kiss to the base of his neck.

“This is nice,” Mike mumbles.

Lucas laughs, and the noise is everywhere around him. He turns his head into Lucas’s chest and breathes.

“Wanna play Go Fish?” Max asks.

Lucas turns a little. “Yeah, okay.”

She gets the cards and deals, and Lucas props his hand up on Mike’s head.

Mike lets it happen, and after their second game he feels well enough to elbow Lucas off of him so he can breathe properly, though he still squirms back up against Lucas’s chest, head Lucas’s bicep as he yawns and watches Lucas play.

Lucas eventually puts on some music, some soft rock that Mike doesn’t recognize right away, and massages at Mike’s shoulders until he’s all but forced to go boneless, if only because Lucas’s hands are rough and deft and feel so good.

“You know, if you’re feeling up to it, a walk or something might help,” Lucas asks. “Work off some of that nervous energy?”

Mike sighs, thinking it over. He doesn’t really want to do anything, except maybe go back to the days when things were easier. Which would be a while ago.

“Remember when you had that tire swing?” he asks blearily.

“Yeah,” Lucas says, cocking his head in curiosity.

“Oh?” Max says, smiling, her fingers tracing circles into Mike’s shoulder.

“Yeah,  _ my _ place used to be the hangout place until 5th grade,” Lucas says proudly. “Then Mike’s parents let him have the basement to himself and it was great. But we had a bigger back yard, and so we could play out there.”

“We could do that,” Mike said. “Have a tire swing.”

It’s not exactly going back to being a carefree kid, but it sounds nice. And he could probably just go sit outside, and then at least he’d be getting fresh air when he was too tired to do much.

“Not a bad idea,” Lucas says. “Come on, let’s shower and get dressed.”

He moves very slowly as he stands and puts his hands out to drag Mike after him, and Mike appreciates it. “There you go, baby.”

~~**~~

They get a tire and rope and then eat leftovers for lunch. 

And then they spend a half an hour arguing over who can actually climb a tree without hurting themselves and Max ends up in the tree while Lucas throws her rope and Mike balances the tire for them, and then Lucas hauls Mike up into the tire swing so he can dangle there sleepily, swinging back and forth with the wind.

“This was not a bad idea,” he determines. “I don’t think I’ve spent any time in our own back yard.”

“You’ve never been an outdoor person,” Lucas teases, spinning him just a little.

“I could sit out here with some beers,” Max says.

Mike wrinkles his nose. “Gross.”

“Something sweet for you?” she asks.

“You offering?” he asks.

She shrugs. “Yeah. Plus some chips and dip?”

He nods. “Okay.”

“Get  _ good beer,” _ Lucas insists.

She makes a face at him, hopping up onto the porch and back into the house.

“Want me to tell the Cap I need another week of light duty?” Lucas asks Mike once she’s gone.

“Yeah, I don’t think you dying is going to get less scary in a week,” Mike mutters.

“I’m not going to die,” Lucas says.

“Ever?” Mike asks.

“Ever,” Lucas says. “We’ll sail off the edge of the world together when we’re ready.”

Mike rolls his eyes. 

“Really expected you to ask if there were black elves,” Lucas says.

“Uh, I’m not twelve anymore,” Mike says, twisting himself around with his feet in the grass beneath them. “I know all the elves are black.”

Lucas’s eyes twinkle and he tries not to show how excited he is to hear it. “Pretty sure they were all described as fair-skinned.”

“Well, what does Tolkien know,” Mike says. “I say they’re all black.”

He lifts his feet and lets himself spin back to the start, and Lucas catches him before he spins right back around, pulling him in for a kiss. “And I say that I’m not gonna die.”

“Someday you have to,” Mike mumbles. “Sorry to tell you. Everyone dies.”  _ And I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it so much,  _ he doesn’t add.

“You can’t live with that looming over you,” Lucas says. 

To some extent, that’s what worries Mike. “So what am I supposed to do?” 

“Believe me,” Lucas says, cupping his face in his hands. “I’m not gonna die.”

“If I do that,” Mike says, “it’s gonna hurt worse if you do.”

“Well it’s not my problem then, is it?” Lucas teases.

Mike laughs at that.

“Okay,” Lucas says, slowly. “If I die.” (Mike can’t breathe) “I’m gonna spend my last second on earth being happy that I got to spend all that time with you and Max. So if you want to help me out, I’m gonna need you to be in the here and now, alright? And the only way you’re gonna be able to do that is if you take deep breaths,” he pulls Mike in so their chests are flush and Mike feels Lucas breathing against his own chest,  _ “deep breaths, _ and you tell yourself: I am  _ not _ going to die.”

“Okay,” Mike says. 

“And statistically, I probably won’t,” Lucas says. “Because I’m a healthy adult who is careful and wears a lot of safety gear.”

Mike nods, taking shaky breaths as he sniffles, trying and failing not to cry.  _ What would I do with myself if Lucas died? _ he thinks, and then realizes Lucas is right, if he puts thought into that, he’s going to collapse and not get back up, and what’s the point of that? So he summons up all his strength and pushes that thought back. “Okay,” he warbles.

“Okay?”

“Okay,” he says, more forcefully.

Lucas smiles at him. “Okay!”

He pulls Mike in for a kiss, holding him tight, and Mike could get lost in this moment for a lifetime, the wind rustling in the trees around them and a bluejay chirping nearby as Lucas’s lips press against his, warm and firm.

Max returns with booze and they end up on the porch as the sun goes down with a battery powered lantern, their stereo plugged into the kitchen and playing Billy Ocean, Mike pleasantly buzzed and slumped against Lucas and Max against his back as they do something like slow dancing.

“Were you worried about me too, babygirl?” Lucas asks, reaching back to tug Max’s hair teasingly.

“Call me babygirl again, I dare you,” she says.

“Max is avoiding the queeeeestiooooon,” Mike sing-songs.

“Thanks, Mike,” Lucas says.

Mike hums, pleased at the praise even if it was slightly sarcastic.

“You guys take care of each other tomorrow, got it?”

“We’ll be on our best behavior,” Max promises.

Mike hums again, yawning, Lucas’s gentle rocking back and forth lulling him to sleep.

“It’s late,” Lucas says. “I’m gonna take you to bed.”

“Mm,” Mike informs him.

Lucas grins. “I guess the way to get you to sleep is just to ply you with alcohol,” he says.

“Sounds good to me,” Mike says.

“Not serious,” Lucas says, scooping Mike up into his arms. “I think you’ve lost weight, though.”

“Probably,” Mike murmurs. “I’ll eat tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Lucas says, and gets him to bed, slipping off his shoes and pants and sweater, clumsily working off his own clothes too so he can nestle into bed under him, Mike on his one shoulder and Max on the other. Mike appreciates the fact that he seems to be shirtless, the relief of skin to skin contact surprisingly helpful in falling asleep.

Mike dreams of being alone in Hawkins lab, but there’s no dead bodies so he counts it as a win.

~~**~~

Lucas drags him out of bed by his ankles for a shower in the morning, and this time, Mike spends the whole time just trying to touch as much of him as he can, with his hands, his mouth, arching up against him.

“Babe,” Lucas says. “We’re not having shower sex.”

“‘S not for sex,” Mike says, pulling Lucas up against him so he can kiss him feverishly.

It’s not, though this is probably the first time since Lucas broke his arm that Mike has seen signal of his sex drive off in the distance. For now, though, it’s just about convincing himself that Lucas is entirely, completely, presently  _ here. _ And dammit, he  _ will be again  _ 24 hours from now.

“Okay, well, I’m still gonna be late,” Lucas says, shutting off the water.

Mike pouts at him, but Lucas just lifts him out of the tub and starts wrestling him into his clothes.

Max makes breakfast and they both see Lucas out, and then Max comes back inside and throws herself on the couch.

“No work today either?” Mike asks.

Max shakes her head. “Explained to my boss that I’m going to be spacey, he said he’d rather me take some days off than crash his planes.”

Mike snorts. “You’re not feeling well either?”

She shakes her head. “It’s worse than his first day back.”

“I think we were braced for that,” Mike says.

She sighs, nodding.

They sit on opposite ends of the couch, legs tangled together, in thoughtful silence, for several seconds.

“Wanna make out?” she asks.

“You don’t even like making out,” he accuses.

“I don’t not like it,” she says. “Come on, I need a distraction.”

“Sure,” he says. 

She pushes herself up and straddles him, hands in his hair and her teeth on his lip. He doesn’t mind Max’s style - it’s not like they don’t sometimes makeout, when they’re bored or for Lucas’s sake or sometimes just because, but it’s not a frequent enough thing for this to feel anything but awkward, both of them too stressed to really hit the same tempo as the other.

Max pulls away first, and he’s breathless, but he’s sort of relieved.

“This isn’t working,” he decides.

“Nope,” she says.

He sighs. He’s not actively shaking today but he’s so tense it aches. “Teach me to skateboard?”

“I can’t do that,” she says. “I would have to look Lucas in the eyes and explain to him how I let you break your neck.”

“Oh, fuck off,” he says, rolling his eyes. “Come on, you wanted a distraction.”

She groans. “Okay, but you’re gonna be bad at it.”

“Oh, what a genius assessment,” he says.

“Fine!” she complains, and goes to get her board.

They end up on the driveway, Max holding his hands as he wobbles on the board. He’s not sure how they never did this in high school or even college, but here they are.

She gripes at him, but she’s not a bad teacher. To be fair, she spends her days teaching people how to fly an entire plane, so surely this can’t be too hard.

It takes him two hours to get steady enough to coast down to the next house, during which time Dustin comes over to eat leftovers in their yard while reading a textbook and occasionally agreeing with Max while she clearly bullies Mike.

Mike is nearly relaxed when they go back inside, and then Max takes him out to the store so he can make spaghetti again.

And then they end up rewatching Airplane!, because at this point they can quote the entire  _ the red lane is for loading and unloading _ scene word for word and they both always laugh at the punchline, especially when Mike’s the one who says, “I know what this is really about, you want me to get an abortion!”

Lucas always gives them a judgmental look for that one.

“Mike,” Max says. “Can you handle me freaking out for, like, just a second?”

“Maybe,” he says.

“What the fuck would we do if Lucas died on the job?”

“I don’t know,” Mike says. “I am currently losing my mind and if I think about it too much I will go all the way bananas.”

“Okay,” she says, biting her lip.

“Listen, you’re probably going to have to stuff me in a straight jacket,” he says, remarkably calm. Of course, remarkably calm for the situation and the topic means he’s swallowing down tears and breathing hard through his nose, but still. “But we’ll do it together.”

She nods.

“He  _ won’t,  _ though,” he says, which is much easier to tell her than himself.

“You,” she decides, “are way too good at putting aside your own needs for comforting other people.”

“Wish I was better at it,” he says.

“I don’t,” she says. “You would die.”

“I beg to differ.”

She hits him in the face with a throw pillow, and he lets her. “I don’t think I can sleep tonight,” she says.

“I don’t either,” he replies.

She rests her head on his shoulder and they watch Ferris Buellers day off, and then they make popcorn and curl up under a blanket and watch The Karate Kid and somewhere along that movie, Mike dozes off and has a really weird dream about Ralph Macchio.

And he wakes up in their bed, confused and sluggish, well into the afternoon.

“Morning,” Lucas whispers, sitting down next to him. “Did you guys even try to sleep last night?”

Mike sits up slowly. “Uh,” he says. “No.”

Lucas gives him an unimpressed look, and that’s when it really hits how relieved he is to see Lucas, because today felt like the real trial, somehow, like fate looking down at them and deciding if they got another day. And Mike knows it wasn’t, but he was scared as though it was, and it feels like a little chink in the armor of his terror, a reassurance that Lucas can leave and be a hero and save lives and then come back.

(And then he can get hurt, heal, and still come back. Repeatedly.)

Mike surges forward and kisses him so hungrily that Lucas has to quickly readjust his stance to keep them both from dropping straight to the floor. And then when he doesn’t stop, he just picks Mike right up and takes him to the hall, shutting the door behind himself, and whatever relief high Mike is riding right now, being picked up like he weighs almost nothing doesn’t do much to curb it.

“You’re gonna wake Max,” Lucas says.

“She’ll live,” Mike manages, and kisses Lucas again, wanting both to taste him and just to be close to him all at once.

(And hello, sex drive, been a while.)

Lucas walks him back against the other side of the hallway, kissing back just as hungrily as Mike hits the wall. He’s been worried about Mike, too, so this is probably a relief for him too, even if it’s not  _ palpable evidence that people you love won’t die the moment they leave your line of sight and do something risky  _ level relief.

Lucas slides one arm under his waist and another under his thighs and lifts him again, easily, carefully, and gets him onto the couch, on top of him in the same movement, his hands in Mike’s hair and teeth scraping gently along Mike’s bottom lip, just teasing, and Mike starts laughing.

“What?” Lucas says, pulling back.

“Max and I tried making out to distract from how stressed we were,” Mike says.

“How’d that go?” Lucas asks.

“Could have been worse,” Mike says. “But it wasn’t… good.”

Lucas snorts. “It’s cute, though.”

“Mm,” Mike agrees. “Hey. I liked where this was going, but maybe not right now. Just… Just tell me about work?”

“Hey, you jumped  _ my _ bones,” Lucas says, crawling over him and settling around him snuggly. “Work was super chill, just up front. Biggest problem was an oil fire at a restaurant downtown. New kid panicked and put it out wrong and the whole kitchen went up in flames, but we got there before it got close to anything serious.”

Mike nods.

“And I got to use the basket,” Lucas says. “Some kid got stuck outside his window. Otherwise, not a whole lot going on today.”

Mike breathes out, resting against him. “Okay,” he says. “You’re okay, I’m okay.”

“You sure?” Lucas says.

Mike nods. “I think so,” he says, almost surprised to hear it. “You can focus on Max today, I think she was… more freaked than she wanted to let on.”

“Yeah, thought she was,” Lucas says. “We’ll do something nice for her today, you up for it?”

“Yes,” Mike says. “But until she wakes up, you’re mine?”

“If you say so,” Lucas chuckles, pulling Mike in close and kissing him.

And for the first time in a while, Mike actually feels like he’s going to be alright.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NEXT chapter... it is time for bastard cat


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> st4 filming starts today and i would give my left leg for just any kind of acknowledgement of how traumatized mike is
> 
> small warning for implied sexual content (offscreen)

Max drags them out to Munroe Lake. It’s still too cold to swim so they end up eating sandwiches and looking at the geese while the waves lap at the ground beside them. But she likes to be by the water to calm down, so Mike doesn’t complain for once, just sits on the park table they’ve claimed for themselves and lets Lucas wrap himself around her.

“You okay?” he asks, while Lucas goes off to pee.

She gives him a playful, suspicious look. “What’d we say about putting yourself first?”

“I feel absolutely fine right now,” Mike says. “Super calm. And I’d feel a lot better if I knew whether or not I should be worried about you.”

She sighs, and he takes her hand.

“Hey,” he says softly. “It’s like what you said about trusting me to be angry, I think? I trust you to have problems and not, like, immediately die or leave forever.” He grimaces. “I trust Lucas with that too, which is why it really tripped me up when I thought about losing him. But for the most part, supporting you guys is different from other people. Like…” He wrinkles his nose, and she giggles at him. “Like you guys are holding me up and I’m just making sure you don’t get tired doing it.”

“We  _ are,  _ Noodle,” she says, ruffling his hair.

He thinks that nickname is one of her more affectionate ones, which is terrible. He’d protest, but he likes the affection too much.

“So,” he says. “Tell me. How are you holding up? With me, with Lucas…?”

Her breath puffs out over his head in a small cloud. “Okay, I think. I uh… I mean, I guess I sort of knew that it’s scary to have one boyfriend have a building fall on him and then the other…”

“Turn to mush,” Mike says indulgently.

“Right, yes,” Max says. “But I didn’t really deal with how scary until it seemed like we were in the home stretch. And then I had a second of… oh. Yeah. The past month has kind of been a doozy.”

Mike squeezes her hand.

“But seriously,” she says. “I’m okay. I needed the day to relax, though.”

“Tomorrow work?” he asks.

“Yep,” she says. “And you get Lucas all to yourself, you lucky bastard.”

He grins. “You know, I could always hang out in Dustin’s office after you’re home from work if you need one-on-one time.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” she says. “Right now I just want to feel at least remotely confident that you won’t literally crumble into dust.”

“I think there’s a chance I might not,” he says, putting his chin on her thigh. She smooths her hand over his head and they both watch the waves until they hear a clicking.

Max groans. “I  _ thought _ you were taking too long to pee,” she says.

“I had a gut feeling you guys might do something cute,” Lucas says, grinning and winding the camera to the next bit of film. “And you did!”

“Gross,” she says.

“Let him have this,” Mike tells her.

She tugs at his hair teasingly.

He tickles the back of her knee until she kicks.

“And, back to normal,” Lucas laughs, and takes another picture.

Mike yawns.

“I kind of want to just drive around town for a while,” Max says. “Just to calm my nerves so I get to sleep on time. I don’t want to miss work again.”

“Okay,” Lucas says, and they plod back to the car.

Dustin says Max drives too fast and turns too fast, but Mike thinks her driving is smooth, quick, like a panther. She drives them across town and back again, and he falls asleep in the backseat listening to her and Lucas discussing something about helicopters.

He wakes up to Lucas hauling him out of the car, holding him in his arms so tenderly that Mike feels like he’s floating. He presses a sloppy kiss to Lucas’s jaw and dozes back off, waking briefly to help Lucas undress him and tuck him in.

He hopes he and Max watch a movie together or something, but he has no idea because he actually sleeps like a baby.

~~**~~

“Noooooooo,” Mike whines, trying to cling to the sheets while Lucas drags him out of bed. “You don’t even have work todaaaaaaay.”

“So?” Lucas says, hauling him out of bed. The use of both arms has made Lucas a monster, Mike decides. “Come on, getting out of bed in time makes you feel better.”

“What tiiiiime is iiiiiit?” Mike whines.

“Ten,” Lucas says. “Max is already at work and she fell asleep later than you.”

“That’s Max’s problem.”

“Nope. Up,” Lucas says, hiking Mike up like he expects to be able to stand him up on his legs and activate the part of his brain that does awakeness things. Instead, Mike lets his legs slide out in front of him, not to be outdone by Lucas and his muscles and his can-do attitude.

Lucas tries it again, and maybe Mike’s kind of awake at this point, laughing despite himself, but he still won’t use his legs and Lucas can’t make him.

“Unbelievable,” Lucas says, and drags him across the hall to the bathroom like a dead body.

Mike tries very hard not to laugh, but it’s happening anyway.

Lucas hauls him onto the side of the tub.

“Bath?” Mike asks.

“So if you can’t be lazy in bed, you’ll be lazy in the bathtub,” Lucas says, and pulls off his shirt before leaning past Mike to turn on the water. “I see how it is.”

“I don’t know about being lazy,” Mike mumbles, appreciating Lucas’s biceps as he leans onto the side of the tub.

For all the muscle he’s put on, first working out in college, then as a firefighter, Lucas is still built pretty lean. He’s not as gangly as Mike, but he’s decently tall and his muscles are more defined than large. Mike likes it - it feels very  _ Lucas.  _

Will likes big muscles (something that has made Max nearly puke with laughter given his first crush) and sometimes he’s made an attempt to get Mike to see why, but Mike just likes seeing how  _ strong _ Lucas is, how light reflects off the curves of his muscles, shifting as he moves. There’s something sharp and smooth to it, the way Lucas’s dark skin picks up the colors of the light around him, something that Mike finds utterly beautiful.

“We’re not boning in the bath,” Lucas says. “That’s gross.”

Mike laughs. “What is?”

“Bathing in spunk,” Lucas says. “Gross.”

“Okay, well,” Mike says, pulling Lucas in close. “We don’t have to go that far.”

Lucas tugs his shirt off for him. “Look who’s back,” he teases, wrapping his arms around Mike and squeezing, kissing him hard.

Except kissing hard with Lucas is never kissing  _ rough, _ just firm and all encompassing. His lips know how to capture Mike’s so everything feels active and present and  _ good.  _ Every little move, every hitch of Lucas’s breath reverberates through Mike’s body, and they’re both reaching frantically for the tap at the same time to turn it off because Lucas is hauling Mike to his feet and backing him out of the bathroom and into the bedroom.

~~**~~

They end up taking that bath much later, both of them languid and relaxed in the warm water, Mike resting back against Lucas’s chest.

“I missed you,” Lucas says.

Mike stares at the water. He knows what that means. He nods.

“I’m not saying that because of the sex, by the way,” Lucas says. “You’ve just been more awake since yesterday.”

“Hence the sex,” Mike says. He pauses. He wants Lucas to know he understood the heart of the matter. “I missed me too.” He bites at his lip slowly. “Is this… Do you think this is over?”

Lucas shakes his head. “I think maybe the worst of it is,” he says. “But I think you’re gonna have to be aware of your own limits for the rest of your life.”

“Yeah,” Mike says. He’d suspected as much. “I um… I’m not good at that.”

Lucas chuckles. “Really? I had no idea.”

Mike snorts. “Thanks.”

“You’re so hopeless,” Lucas says softly, leaning onto Mike’s shoulder so he can look at him. “All you have to do is put yourself first when you’re literally on the verge of collapse and you look like a deer in the headlights.”

Mike lets out a noise of frustration. “It’s not like I’m never selfish! I’m selfish all the time!”

“So is everyone!” Lucas protests. “Jesus, just…  _ think, _ man!”

“Genius advice,” Mike gripes. “Just think.”

“Don’t be an ass,” Lucas says, flicking his ear.

“I thought I was supposed to be,” Mike says.

“No, you’re supposed to watch how much work you’re putting into people and how much work you’ve got in you,” Lucas says, splashing him in the face. “Ass.”

Mike splutters at him. “What if I’ve got no work in me? Like, forever?”

“Then you don’t.” Lucas says.

“Gee, thanks.”

“What do you want me to say? If you’re out you’re out. You’ll just be a deadbeat little shit for me and Max to take care of.”

Mike slides down so he can blow despondent bubbles into the water.

“It’s okay, we only want you for your body anyway,” Lucas says.

Mike nearly chokes and Lucas has to help him back up and wipe water away from his nose while he wheezes and laughs. “Yeah, my lanky white ass is really everything you ever wanted, huh?”

“Oh yeah,” Lucas teases. “But for what it’s worth, I think you got some work left in you.  _ If _ you keep an eye on yourself.”

Mike sighs against him wearily, and lets them both soak there for a while longer.

“Okay, I’m going to make spaghetti,” Mike says. “Wanna help?”

“Yeah,” Lucas says. “I do.”

~~**~~

They make spaghetti and then they read on the couch together until Max gets home and nestles up against them to play video games.

It occurs to Mike that it was very little work to get them all to feel this content, and that makes him feel almost hopeful for the future.

~~**~~

And then it’s shift day again, and Mike has to get up at 7 because Lucas is rolling him out of bed and dragging him to the shower.

“One of these days,” Mike says, as Lucas manhandles him under the stream of water, “if you keep doing this, I’m gonna make you late for work.”

“I’d like to see you try,” Lucas says. “With these skinny arms.”

“I wasn’t thinking of wrestling you,” Mike says.

“Don’t even think about shower sexing me,” Lucas says. “You’ll die. You can barely stay standing on dry land, much less bathtub land.”

Mike glares at him, and that settles it. “Oh yeah?”

“Mike, I’m serious, you will fall,” Lucas warns.

Mike slides down to his knees. “Not if I’m already down here.”

Lucas gives him that look he only whips out when he knows he should admit defeat but won’t. “Dammit Mike.”

Mike just grins.

(In the end, he doesn’t make Lucas late with that, because he takes pity on him and foregoes Lucas dressing him to make him a PB&J sandwich in his boxers so that Lucas can eat while Max drives him to work. But then he panics, just a little, when Lucas is leaving, and needs to kiss him goodbye gently and tell him earnestly how much he loves him, just in case, and Lucas doesn’t even protest, just holds Mike gently until he can breathe evenly again, and  _ that _ is what makes Lucas five minutes late, but Mike doesn’t regret that much.)

He contemplates going back to bed, but then he’ll probably sleep all day, and though he thinks he might have to take it easy today, he doesn’t want to get all sluggish.

So instead he puts on a pair of sunglasses and lays down on the porch to take a nap there in the sunshine.

The sounds of birds chirping, lawnmowers roaring and children playing around him keep him from dozing off completely on the hard porch, but he slips in and out of a comfortable lull.

A while in, a stray cat joins him, stalking around him a few times.

“Hey little guy,” Mike says. “What’s hangin’?”

The cat looks at him. It’s a big black cat with only one eye and a slightly mangled tail.

“Checking to see if I’m free food?” Mike asks it.

The cat gives him a look like that had been the original plan, and it’s not particularly pleased in the changes happening here.

“Sorry to disappoint,” he says. “I’m not for eating.”

He has a surge of panic, not so much because of the flashbacks, but because mentioning that things might want to eat him  _ should _ set him off, right? It’s almost like the charlie horses he used to get while in the midst of his growth spurts, a pain caused by the anticipation of pain.

The cat flops down beside him in an almost cartoonish 90 degree arc, and that nearly entirely distracts him from the impending panic attack.

“Okay,” he says. “Just chill with me, then.”

He watches the cat’s mangled tail flick lazily in the sun, yawning.

Eventually, he gets up to get some baloney for the cat and a book for himself and sits in the sun reading. The cat seems warrier now that he’s sitting up, but the baloney seems to have smoothed it over, because it continues sitting beside him.

Mike finishes the book, then does laundry. He gets as far as drying it, and then decides to not push it and waits for Dustin to grab him for lunch.

Lunch is actually quite fun. They eat spaghetti on campus and swing by the biology building to look at frogs for a while, and then Mike shoves Dustin back into his office to work on his thesis, because Dustin’s clearly stalling.

He walks back home, which is actually not that bad, though now he definitely won’t have the energy to fold the laundry.

Instead, he ends up finding the biggest patch of sun in the living room and lying face down in it to take another nap, forehead pressed against the cool hardwood.

He only realizes how that looks when Max gets home and wakes him up with an anxious,  _ “Jesus!” _

He wrenches his head up. “What?”

“What happened?” she asks, touching his forehead.

“I was napping,” he says.

She stares him for a long moment before shoving him hard in the shoulder. “Jesus Christ, Mike, I thought you’d passed out or had a stroke or something!”

He doesn’t mean to laugh, but he does. “What do you mean walking in to find me face down on the floor didn’t immediately make you think I was just enjoying myself?”

“God!” she says, slumping back against the couch. “Michael!”

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to scare you.” He’s doing an okay job at not laughing as he puts his hand on her knee.

“I’m telling Lucas you did this,” she says, putting a hand over her heart. “God.”

He wraps his hand around hers, weaving their forearms together and curls up against her. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she says. “Jeez.”

“It’s cute you worry about me,” he teases.

“Of course I do,” Max says, thumbing at that back of his hand.

Mike sighs and leans against her. “We gonna try to sleep tonight?”

“Yeah,” she says. “And we’ll do it.”

She holds up her hands for a double high five, and he happily indulges her.

“Let’s set up here,” he says. “And play video games until we’re sleepy.”

“Oh, you feel like losing?” Max responds, grinning.

He rolls his eyes. “One of these days we’ll find a game I’m better at than you and it’s going to give you an entire existential crisis.”

“Keep telling yourself that, sweetcheeks.”

They drag out their sleeping bags, pillows and blankets onto the living room floor in front of the TV and set up Mortal Kombat. Max beats him every time, of course, but Mike doesn’t mind. He rests his head on her shoulder and keeps spamming random buttons to watch her pulverize him with actual combos.

“Is this just some kind of twisted power fantasy for you?” he asks.

“Yep,” she says, absolutely destroying his character. “Ohho,  _ yeah,  _ that was record time, too!”

“I haaaate youuuuuuu.” Mike whines, though he doesn’t at all. She leans into him where he rests on her and yawns.

The phone rings and they both jump.

Max is on her feet first, leaving Mike to sit on his heels and try to breathe. Max relaxes the moment she answers the phone, though, so it can’t be so bad, but Mike’s heartrate doesn’t care. “Okay,” she says. “We will. Okay. Bye. We love you.”

She puts the phone down. “Lucas wanted to make sure we’d actually go to bed tonight.”

Mike nods, breath catching on a sob low in his chest.

“Hey,” she says. “Breathe with me.”

She takes his hands in hers and presses her nose to his and breathes in and out loudly. He follows her, shaky, and slowly it becomes more natural. “Sorry,” he mumbles.

“It’s okay, calms me too,” Max says, still breathing performatively through her mouth and nose. 

They breathe together for a while, and then relax into the pillows.

“One more round?” she asks.

“Sure, sure,” he sighs, picking up the controller. “I love losing.”

She grins and picks a character to trounce him with.

~~**~~

They both wake up with nightmares and end up turning on PBS to play quietly in the background while they sleep curled up together for comfort, bundled tightly into the blankets together, which ends up adding another photo to Lucas’s slowly growing collection.

He comes home with bagels, gently navigating Max through getting ready for work while Mike rolls over and makes use of Lucas’s focus on Max to get in a few more minutes of sleep.

But then Max is off to work and Lucas is hauling Mike out of his perfect little blanket mound.

“Noooo,” Mike complains.

“C’mon, I wanna vacuum,” Lucas says.

_ “Ugh,” _ Mike says, but he goes and gets his sunglasses and takes his napping onto the porch.

He hopes his new cat friend will come and join him, but for a while it doesn’t seem like it. And then with a small thud, it comes prowling.

He lifts his hand to let it sniff, and the cat hisses at him.

“Alright then,” he says, withdrawing his hand.

The cat flops down beside him and Mike puts his hands behind his head and listens to the humming of the vacuum cleaner.

When it stops, Mike sighs and gets up. He gets some more baloney and sets it outside for the cat, then joins Lucas.

“Wanna go to the movies?” Lucas asks.

“Yeah, in a second,” Mike says. “First let me call my mom and ask her about food so we can go to the store after.”

“Alright,” Lucas says, giving him a kiss on the cheek. “I’ll be in the garage if you need me, car needs an oil change anyway.”

Mike nods and calls his mom. 

“You know, I could make you a recipe book,” she says.

“No!” he says, too quickly. “No, I like this. It’s nice. If that’s alright.”

She pauses. “It is.”

It’s more than they ever talked before. He bites his lip, not sure what to say next.

“How are you doing?” she asks.

“Good,” he says. “Really good, actually. Staying at home is a relief.”

“Good,” she says. “If that’s what you need, that’s okay.”

“Yeah.” He snorts. “I’m sure Dad likes it.”

“Your father’s an idiot,” Karen says, exasperated. “Apparently he said some things to Holly about it and we had a long discussion about how much my staying at home helped his career. Hopefully she registered some of it.”

Mike snorts. “I mean I’m glad she’s closer to him than Nancy and I,” he says.

“I suppose being a father for every third child is better than no father at all,” Karen says. “But I wish I didn’t have to do damage control for the bullshit that can come out of that man’s mouth.”

Mike laughs. “Yeah,” he says. “But… I’m sure Holly will figure things out eventually.”

“Anyway, don’t mind your father,” Karen says. “You’re doing just fine. Let’s make… hm. Beef bourguignon.”

He smiles. “Okay. Let’s.”

He gets the shopping list from her.

The doorbell rings. “I got it!” he yells to Lucas and opens the door, coming face to face with a very cranky looking Nancy.

“Mike, what the  _ hell,” _ she says, before he can so much as say hello or ask her why she’s not in New York. “You have a nervous breakdown and I find out from  _ Mom? _ I thought we agreed no more secrets!”

“Yeah, before you brought down a secret government installation without telling me!” Mike fires back.

“Uh, that’s  _ bullshit,” _ she says.

“Nancy, I found out that you broke up with Steve from Dustin six months into you dating Jonathan,” Mike says. “And  _ then _ I found out you were engaged to Jonathan from Will!”

“Well I found out you were dating two people from Jonathan!” she snaps. “And this isn’t dating, it’s a nervous breakdown!”

A car goes by, reminding them that they’re having this conversation on the doorstep.

“Come inside,” Mike says, sighing and stepping aside to let her in. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I didn’t want you to leave New York just to watch me not get out of bed every morning.”

“So… you feel better now?” she asks.

He nods. “For the past few days, yeah, it’s been pretty calm.”  _ Just a few panic attacks. _

She sighs. “Okay. Well. I have until tomorrow evening to hang out here.”

“Did you fly down from New York just for two days?” he asks.

Nancy has a pretty good job at a major newspaper, but she’s not loaded with money to throw away on weekend trips.

“No, we were in Chicago with Jonathan,” she says. “We’re working on something… personal. We weren’t going to tell anyone about it until it goes through, but…”

Mike raises a brow.

“You’re going to be an uncle,” she says. “Probably.”

“You’re pregnant?” Mike asks, wrinkling his nose at Nancy.

“God no,” she says. “We’re adopting.”

“Oh,” he says. “Well why wouldn’t you tell me  _ that?” _

“It’s…” Nancy stops and sighs. “We didn’t want to rush anything. She’s been through some stuff and we just… Didn’t want to make it a big deal.”

“Yeah, well…” Mike says. “I didn’t either.”

“Mike, you’re my brother,” Nancy sighs. “You’re a big deal to me. I know we’re not great at this, but… Seriously.”

Mike shrugs. “I know.”

She sighs and hugs him, and he stands there awkwardly and lets it happen. “So you’re alright now?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Sort of.”

He sits down on the couch and she sits down next to him.

“You know, I take medication to help me sleep,” she says. “You’re not alone in this.”

He nods.

“If you ever just want to call,” she says. “I know it’s a bit pricey to New York, but…”

“No, I know,” Mike says. “It’s… Honestly I feel like I can’t keep up with the people in Indiana trying to comfort me.”

She snorts. “You know your loved ones worrying about you doesn’t mean it’s your responsibility to reassure them, right?”

He rolls his eyes. “I…”

_ “Right?” _ she presses, a disbelieving smile on her face.

“Well it feels like it!” he cries. “Everyone’s asking me if I’m okay and I just want to tell them I am and I don’t  _ think _ I’m lying, but…”

She sighs and nudges his shoulder with her own. “No more secrets,” she says. “For  _ real _ this time. I’m not going to freak out if you’re not okay.”

“Cold,” he says.

“That’s me,” Nancy says. “I’m a cutthroat career woman, didn’t you hear?”

He laughs at that. It’s untrue, but there’s more to it than that.

“I mean, good right now means that when I have panic attacks and nightmares I bounce back quickly,” Mike says. “Instead of being incapacitated for days. But… you know, that genuinely feels like a relief.”

She nods. “Hey. Progress is progress.”

Lucas joins them with a grin. “Thought I heard you, Nancy.”

“Hi!” she says, jumping up to give him a hug.

“What are you doing here in the Midwest?” Lucas asks.

“Jonathan and I were, uh, getting to know a little girl we were thinking about adopting,” she says. “He’s getting along with her pretty well, so I told her I had to swing by to check on my baby brother.”

Lucas grins. “Well, I was thinking about taking your little brother out to the movies, want to come with?”

“Sure,” she says.

“Last time he went to the movies, it ended pretty badly, so I think we’re gonna watch something easy. Like The Lion King.”

“Oh, Jonathan called that, and I quote, emotionally manipulative. Which I assume means it’s a sad movie from a large corporation? I was working from home when he took Harriet, so I don’t know.”

Lucas snorts. “Okay, well, then maybe not.”

“Timecop,” Mike says, paging through the paper to see the showtimes. “It’s a Van Damme movie. How much of an emotional strain can that be?”

“Alright, fair enough,” Lucas says. “Get your jacket.”

~~**~~

It kicks off with an explosion killing the hero’s wife, which means Mike ends up gripping Lucas’s hand like a vice through about half of it, but it’s so cheesy that it doesn’t end up in a panic attack.

“I guess you’re never going to be able to watch movies without me,” Lucas teases him when they get out of the theater.

“Ha  _ ha,” _ Mike gripes as they head over to Kroger’s. “I handled it okay.”

“Dustin took him to see a ‘Nam movie,” Lucas explains to Nancy.

“Oh, Dustin,” Nancy says, leaning over Mike’s shoulder to check his list and getting some tomato paste.

Mike grins and intertwines his pinky with Lucas’s subtly, so no one sees. Lucas runs his knuckles over the back of Mike’s hand as he does, not looking up from where he’s studying the list, but it makes Mike’s chest squeeze with a sort of grateful relief.

When they go home, Mike takes out a little bit of meat from the package and puts it into a small box so he can take it outside for the cat, then gets to cooking. Max gets home soon after them, and she’s all too happy to catch up with Nancy - she thinks Nancy is super cool.

(Mike doesn’t know how to feel about the fact that every girl he’s dated has a little bit of a crush on his sister, but he supposes he’ll just have to to live with it.)

Nancy’s a star reporter, and she has all kinds of crazy stories from it. She doesn’t travel as much as some of her coworkers, more interested in managing the editing side of things, but she’s been to more countries than the rest of Mike’s friends put together. She took El to South Africa a few years ago and they ended up seeing a great white, and that might explain why El had a massive crush on Nancy for about a year.

Lucas comes and joins Mike in the kitchen, making sure to stay quiet so Mike can talk to his mother in peace, all while wrapping his arms around his waist and kissing the back of his neck, and Mike thinks this might be the perfect moment, Nancy and Max chattering in the background while Lucas holds him and Karen talks him through making food for them.

After he says goodbye and promises to give Nancy Karen’s love, he turns around to kiss Lucas.

“I’m proud of you,” Lucas says.

Mike pulls back to raise his eyebrows. “For what?”

“Just in general,” Lucas says. “I’ve never seen you so relaxed. In third grade you nearly threw up because you got so worked up about our science fair project.”

“We won, didn’t we?” Mike mumbles against his lips, pressing their noses together.

“Woulda won anyway,” Lucas says.

“Okay, Mr. Cool,” Mike gripes, though he sort of means it. Lucas really is cool. He leans into his arms, resting his head on Lucas’s shoulder.

It’s sort of overwhelming that Lucas, the coolest guy Mike knows, would be proud of him just for being content. It makes Mike blush and want to curl up under the counter to hide it.

Lucas notices, though, and giggles. “You’re so easy to flatter,” he laughs.

“Shut up,” Mike mumbles. “I’m…! It’s a lot! You’re really awesome and if you’re proud of me that’s… like… that’s…!”

Lucas puffs up, pleased. “How awesome?”

“You save lives for a living!” Mike says. “And you’re smart and handsome and…” He huffs. As though Lucas doesn’t  _ know _ all this already.

“Yes, I am,” Lucas says happily. “And I love you.”

Mike somehow resists the temptation to sink to the floor and curl up like an embarrassed roly-poly. “Love you too,” he mumbles, getting a kiss on the nose for his efforts.

~~**~~

Nancy stays in their guest room that night and she, Lucas and Mike spend the day doing some clothes shopping downtown and getting ice cream at Chocolate Moose, and then she’s headed back to Chicago. Mike promises to call her every week, at least for a little bit.

He decides that if he’s doing things weekly anyway, he should get his goals on a weekly schedule - something his therapist supports. For this week, the goal is just to befriend the outdoor cat, do the cooking and the laundry.

Cooking turns out to be easiest if he does it with Lucas home, and folding laundry doesn’t seem so bad if he does it with the TV on in the background. 

As for the cat, it seems perfectly comfortable chilling with him while he naps outside or reads on the porch. He gets cat food for it at some point, and starts putting out a little bowl each morning and afternoon.

But then it rains, he wonders if he shouldn’t just stay inside. But eventually he decides to put on a raincoat, grab a book and sit under the lip of their roof, cat food next to him.

After about twenty minutes, the cat seems to decide that Mike is better than the rain, because it hops into his laps and eats from there, which seems like a rousing success.

He tells his therapist the goals for each week, which feels a little like homework but more like homework with Mr. Clarke before everything got so hard in life.

Soon he’s doing the laundry and cooking with regularity and when Lucas and Max are both at work he sits outside and catches up on books with the cat in his lap, purring away. He has Dustin over to their house for lunch most of the time, and the further Dustin gets into his thesis, the more he appreciates having home cooked meals. 

El and Will visit on the weekends sometimes - she has her GED and is waiting for the acceptance letters and scholarships to come in, and he’s still putting together his next gallery - and he calls his mother for help with chores even though he doesn’t always need to.

Two months of no big events rolls around, and as celebration, Mike decides to take the cat to the vet and make it officially his cat.

The cat is fine with him picking it up, but the second Max or Lucas tries to touch it, it starts hissing like crazy.

“Hey,” Mike chides. “These guys take care of me, you can’t be mean to them.”

It gives them a suspicious look, but doesn’t hiss when Max leans against Mike’s back to get a closer look. “This cat’s seen some shit,” she declares.

“That’s why we understand each other, right?” Mike says sweetly, lifting the cat up so it can boop him on the nose.

Lucas starts laughing. “How do you always do this, man?”

“Do what?” Mike says. “I’ve never even had a pet before!”

“Uh, not a pet,” Lucas says. “Taking in strays that don’t like anyone but you?”

Mike blinks at him.

“I’m calling him Ten,” Max announces.

“What?” Mike says. “Come on, he’s not like Eleven.”

Ten looks at him with one sharp yellow eye, purring low against him, and Mike sighs. “Okay, sure, I get it.”

Lucas laughs, clapping him on the back on their way out to the car.

Ten bites several vet techs, but he turns out not to have rabies, so that’s okay. He gets some medicine for intestinal worms, a collar, a bed and a litter box, too, and Lucas assembles a cat door on their garage door.

And thus, Mike has a cat to keep him company while Max and Lucas are at work, and for once, Mike feels like he's doing a pretty good job of all this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i think i've more or less reached the end of what i can creatively do with this fic so i'm gonna give it an epilogue after this and then let it be


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> eyyyyyyy anyway here's an epilogue ft my very funny hc that will's type is 100% nothing like mike and el's is 100% like mike but in women. comedy gold

“You made it!” Will says, like Mike wouldn’t have fucking killed to be here.

“Yeah!” Mike says. “I’m… Yeah! Why wouldn’t I? I fed Ten before we left so he’ll be fine and the drive’s not that long.”

“There is literally nothing anyone could do to Ten to hurt him. That cat’s a fucking monster,” Dustin says.

“Oh, says the guy who  _ literally  _ kept a monster as a pet,” Mike gripes.

“Ten would have murdered the  _ fuck _ out of Dart,” Dustin replies.

“Okay, enough,” Will says. “I just…” He gives Mike a soft look.

It’s been about five months since Mike’s Total Collapse, which has been followed by a lot of small collapses - like being reduced to a sobbing mess for three days because the power went out after a storm, or a week where he couldn’t sleep more than an hour each night for unknown reasons, or the time when he’d had a panic attack while home alone and had stuffed himself into the corner between their bed and the nightstand so intensely that Lucas had only found him via Ten’s steadfast yowling. 

But this has been a Good Month, and he’d been alright visiting Max’s dad for Christmas. They’d left Ten with Dustin and had spent much of their trip on the beach, letting Mike float in the waves while Lucas held him steady and chatted with Max and her dad when they weren’t surfing.

(Mike says catsitting is karmic retribution for Dart, but Dustin says it violates the Geneva Convention.)

If it was anyone else saying it, Mike would be profoundly annoyed, but as is, he shakes his head. “No, dude, come on! You made it big! Of course I’m here to celebrate!”

Will had sold one of his paintings to a major gallery for 50 grand, with an offer for more collaboration in the future. He’d called them crying about it, which had been a small panic of its own, but now everyone’s more than a little proud of him.

“I’m good,” Mike says, a little softer, as Dustin heads off to get in on the snacks and Max and Lucas get in on hugging El. “Seriously, this past month has been really good. Plus it’s an hour’s drive, come on.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re here,” Will says. “Oh, let me introduce you to my boyfriend.”

“Oh, um,” Mike says, as Will takes his wrist and drags him over to a new face, sitting on the couch.

The guy stands up, and Mike for once doesn’t care that Max is going to tease him for the rest of his life over this, he cannot  _ wait _ to laugh with her about it. But for now, he schools his face and looks up at the guy.  _ Up. _

“Hey, man,” he says. “Mike.”

“Oh, Will’s mentioned you before,” he says, reaching forward to shake Mike’s hand, muscles rippling as he does. “Chris.”

“Great to meet you,” Mike says, absolutely earnestly.

Max, sensing a great opportunity for a joke at Mike’s expense, swoops in at this point. “Oh, you must be Chris. El’s mentioned you.”

“Only good things, I hope,” Chris says.

“Well,” Max says. “She has very high standards for her brother. But she likes you well enough.” She leans her elbow on Mike’s shoulder innocently. “So what is it you do, Chris?”

“I’m a personal trainer,” Chris says. He has a kind face, which Mike approves of, but he also has very large pecs which his shirt does an all too good job of showing off.

“I can tell!” Max says cheerfully. Mike grins at Will, who is suddenly very preoccupied with his drink.

“Anyway,” Will says, mortified. “Let me introduce you to Dustin and Lucas.”

He wrenches Chris away, and Chris waves at them as he goes. They wave back together.

“So, do you think Will liked you because you were tall?” Max asks.

“Not  _ that  _ tall,” Mike hisses back. “Did you see him? That guy could crush my head in his elbow.”

“Well, at least you were  _ someone’s  _ type in middle school,” Max says, taking him by the shoulders and turning him.

Mike takes one look and nearly leaves the house then and there. _ “That’s  _ El’s girlfriend?”

“Yep,” Max says.

“Does El realize?”

“Nope!”

“Oh my god, it’s  _ uncanny,” _ Mike whispers.

“Worse than Audrey Hepburn,” Max agrees.

“So much worse!” Mike hisses, trying not to laugh.

Lisa, El’s girlfriend of three months, is tall, has long black hair, and is wearing a cable knit sweater. Max beams at Mike. “You’re a gateway lesbian!”

_ “What?” _ Mike blurts. “That’s not… How does that even make sense?”

“Uh,  _ because--” _ Max starts, before Lucas finds them.

“Can you guys stop ogling everyone’s partners?” Lucas says. “I’m having a tough time explaining to the new guy why I’m dating the two most embarrassing people here.” He jabs his thumb at Chris, who seems to have been roped into a lecture about dopamine receptors by Dustin while Dustin attempts to shove two deviled eggs into his mouth at once, so Mike and Max are hardly the most embarrassing people here

“Sorry Lucas,” they both chime.

He rolls his eyes.

El comes hopping up to them, a letter in hand, which she shoves into Mike’s face.

“Thanks,” Mike says, batting it out of his nose so he can pull it out of her hands and read it. It’s an acceptance letter. “Holy shit, you made it into IU!”

El nods, looking very proud of herself. “Dustin says we can be roommates,” she says. “And Lisa can come too if she wants.”

“Hey,” Mike says. “That’s great. Fair warning, though, he does write his thesis at 3 am half the time and he curses loudly while doing it.” Mike’s hung out at Dustin’s office just to watch him do it in the rare moments when Dustin writes his thesis during the day, so he can only imagine it’s worse at night.

She shrugs.

“I’m really happy for you,” Mike says. “It’ll be great to live in the same town as you again.”

She nods, smiling.

“We have food!” Hopper announces, pushing the door in with his foot, followed by Joyce and Jonathan. He sets the food down and joins El. “Told Will to choose the most expensive food he likes and he chose the  _ better _ Chinese place.”

“He’s  _ responsible,” _ Joyce says. She shuffles close to Mike and rubs his back. “Glad you could make it. Will was a little worried you wouldn’t feel up to it.”

“No, I’m feeling fine,” Mike says, shuffling his feet awkwardly.

“Oh yeah,” Jonathan says. “Nancy says don’t let you escape without a hug.”

Mike groans, but Jonathan just smiles with his arms out.

“Come on, let’s get it over with, I’m not a big hugger either,” he says.

Mike sighs and steps forward to accept the hug. Jonathan squeezes him tightly. For someone who’s allegedly not a hugger, he’s not half bad at it. “How’s Jenny?” he asks.

“Oh, I’m sure her and Nancy are bonding over the world’s most awkward viewing of Sesame Street,” Jonathan says. “Jen thinks Nancy’s amazing, but they don’t know how to talk to each other. But hopefully next year she’ll feel up to meeting the rest of the family and we can talk Nancy into taking time off.”

“Good luck,” Mike says. “But I’d love to meet her.” It’s a little weird, having a niece he hasn’t met yet, but he understands not wanting to swamp her just yet.

“Yeah,” Jonathan laughs. “I know.”

Hopper pulls Mike in for a side hug under El’s watchful gaze, and Mike doesn’t quite know what to do. The hug doesn’t end either, just stays there, Hopper’s arm around his shoulder, leaving it open for Mike to leave when he wants.

It’s probably the most impulsive thing he’s done in years, but Mike leans into it and contemplates the idea of having a father who gives a shit.

Hopper chuckles, sort of bemused by the reaction, but he doesn’t pull away. “How’ve you been, kiddo?” he asks, voice gruff and smelling vaguely of cigarettes and cologne.

Mike shrugs. “Better.”

“Good,” Hopper says. “Great.” He looks at El. “When you move out there, you better keep an eye on this kid, got it?”

El rolls her eyes, not wanting to admit that she’s as amused by the irony in the statement as Hopper clearly is.

“So did you give  _ Lisa _ a lecture about the 3 inch rule?” Mike gripes.

“Don’t get smart with me, kid,” Hopper says with little bite, ruffling Mike’s hair.

Mike smiles, staying there a moment longer before pulling away from Hopper.

The night is great. He tells all kinds of stories about Will, to Chris’s delight, takes a look at all of Will’s sketches for possible paintings in the coming months and praises them under Will’s badly hidden eager look. And he’s pretty sure Lisa noticed that they look more alike than him and his actual sisters, so that’s awkward, but she seems nice.

And then, a few hours in, he ends up on the Byers-Hopper family home’s back porch, alone, trying to catch his breath.

Lucas joins him a second later, quietly putting an arm around him. “You good?”

“Yeah, I think so,” Mike mumbles.

“Wanna talk about it?” Lucas asks.

“No, I’m just… I don’t think I’m… I don’t know,” Mike says. “I really don’t.”

“Okay,” Lucas murmurs.

“I don’t think I would have been happy at this party before the breakdown,” Mike mumbles. “Like, proud, maybe, but not… like, enjoying myself.” He sighs. Sometimes trying to discuss his feelings feels like an endless march of footnotes, back and forth between good and bad and worse and better. “I mean… I kind of… ran out of energy today too, but I was having fun. I think…” He thinks back to the feeling of going to work every day and how little he even  _ remembers _ about those days. How present he was. “I think I would have just stood around feeling empty.”

“Well, that’s a good thing, right?” Lucas asks. “That you feel better now?”

“I just…” Mike mumbles. “I thought I was… I was being a good friend, and a good boyfriend, and… and all. But I just… I feel so much like I was treating it as a job and I feel so stupid thinking that was… like… a good way to be a friend? And so I don’t trust myself to know I’m doing anything right anymore.”

“Mike, you were being a good boyfriend and friend,” Lucas says. “But you were  _ so _ tired. And we could tell. Max and I thought it was mostly the job and we were hoping you’d stop worrying about the mortgage and quit soon, but we knew something was up.”

Mike sniffles. “I guess Will and El are both dating people now, they don’t need me as much.”

Lucas snorts at that. “Nah, they’re gonna need you forever. But you can put yourself first sometimes, you know? Relax. Max and I have got you.” He’s using his smooth voice, stroking Mike’s hair out of his face, and Mike’s annoyed how well that works on him. “And it evens out. You’re a lot more responsive when you’re calm.”

“Oh,” Mike mumbles, feeling oddly fixated on the fact that in order to improve, he had to be bad in the first place. “You… You um… also noticed this?”

“Look, I’m not gonna say I mind coming home to home cooked meals and you actually smiling and laughing and playing with your psychopath of a cat,” Lucas says. “But I didn’t mean you sucked at it before. I just mean when you’re stressed, you get a little… overly focused on one thing.”

Mike can suddenly see a parade of times he zeroed in on one friend only to trip over all the others. Over and over, wash rinse repeat. He feels nauseous. “Oh,” he says, shaky.

“Okay, okay,” Lucas says, pulling Mike’s forehead against his own. “I’m making things worse, huh?”

“I mean,” Mike mumbles. He’s not making anything worse, because he’s here and holding Mike, but now Mike  _ really _ needs clear answers. Fortunately, he can always trust Lucas to tell things like they are. “Have I just sucked until now?”

“No,” Lucas says, cupping Mike’s face in his hands. “It’s okay. You’ve been fine, that’s why Will and El trust you and Max and I love you and Dustin will watch your cat even when it threatens his life.”

Mike snorts.

“But I’m just saying,” Lucas says, “that I’m glad it’s better now.”

“Yeah,” Mike says, the sudden flurry of tension cramping up his body unraveling in a way that pulls something in between a laugh and a sob out of his chest. “Yeah, okay. Okay.”

“Okay,” Lucas murmurs. “Breathe.”

He pushes his nose against Mike’s, taking deep breaths. His breath brushes against Mike’s lips, and after a few deep breaths together, he can’t help but kiss Lucas.

Lucas kisses back, and Mike’s halfway into his lap when they’re joined by Joyce.

“Oh,” she says.

“Hi, Mrs. Byers,” Mike says. “Hopper-Byers?”

“Joyce,” she says firmly. “Sorry, I was just coming out here to smoke.”

“That’s alright,” Mike says, sliding back down onto the porch off of Lucas’s thigh.

“We were just finishing up,” Lucas says, grinning sheepishly.

Joyce smiles, shaking her head and getting her cigarettes.

“Everything okay?” Mike asks, leaning into Lucas.

“Everything is great,” Joyce says. “It’s just a lot to see Will growing up and getting there on his own, you know? Good a lot, but a lot.”

Mike smiles. “We’re all really proud of him.”

“I know,” Joyce says. “So am I.” She looks Mike over. “Are you alright, sweetheart? Will and El tell me the big news, but I can only imagine how bad it gets.”

“I’m okay,” Mike says, a little annoyed at how quickly everything gets turned back around on him these days. Lucas senses the frustration though, because he presses a small kiss just under Mike’s ear, and Mike relents with a shiver. “Better than it was at first.”

“Well, you’re not alone in this, okay?” she says.

He nods. “Right now I’m just a little tired, honest. I haven’t been around this many people for a while.”

Joyce hums understandingly.

“You still okay to stay?” Lucas asks softly. “I think Max is trying to learn Lisa’s entire life story, but we can leave if you need to.”

Mike shakes his head. “No, I’m… I’m okay.” And then, slightly more confidently, he adds, “I am.”

“Alright,” Lucas says. “I’ve got you.”

He lets Mike rest his head on his collarbone as they wait for Joyce to finish her cigarette.

Joyce ruffles his hair gently as they go inside, and he ends up in Lucas’s lap, sleepily watching Will and Dustin drag everyone else into a game of charades.

Mike buries his face into Lucas’s chest and basks in the hum of voices around him, the gentle vibrations of Lucas talking to everyone else while steadily carding his fingers through Mike’s hair.

After a while, Max gets him back into the conversation with pointed little jabs, and Mike gets into a long discussion with her, Dustin and Lisa about Green Lantern, Mike clasped in Lucas’s arms like some kind of floppy stuffed animal.

And finally, they decide to head out.

Mike reaches his arm out to pull Will into a hug. “When you’re rich and famous, remember that for a while in middle school you thought I was your type,” he whispers. It’s still so goddamn funny, standing in the same room as Chris, who is taller than him and could probably lift Mike over his head with one arm.

Will sighs. “I will not, Michael.”

El worms her way under Mike’s other arm and wraps hers around both of them, and Mike nods, resigned, and holds them both.

He hears Max whisper something about “non-threatening string bean energy” to Chris and so he pokes his tongue out at her. She responds in kind, screwing up her face until Lucas has to sink his own into his palm.

“Proud of you guys,” Mike says, one more time, as Dustin drags Will away into a massive bear hug while Will protests.

Mike shoves El at him too, which leads to Dustin squeezing them both, each in one arm, trying to determine if he can lift them both. (He can’t.)

Mike yawns, accepting a hug from Joyce and Hopper too (and an indulgent shake of the hand from Jonathan) while Lucas and Max say their goodbyes, then steps outside into the cool spring air.

Lucas shuffles ahead of him, folding up his jacket onto the window of the backseat as he ushers Mike into the car, getting him settled and buckling him in.

“Really?” Mike mumbles.

“Yeah,” Lucas says, only a tiny bit mocking, and kisses Mike on the forehead.

It’s unnecessary, but the gentleness of it all does have Mike relaxing to the point that he’s dozing by the time Max wrestles Dustin into the car despite his attempts to blow kisses at everyone, and by the time they’re on the highway with Max comfortably chatting with Lucas as she drives, Mike’s out like a light.

He wakes up slightly when they get home, because Lucas tugs him out of the car, gathered up in a firm grip, and he and Max are laughing about something.

“He’s like a baby,” Max says. “We should drive him around to get him asleep all the time.”

Mike sleepily flips her off. She kisses the back of his hand, and Lucas pulls him in tighter as they head back inside.

Ten yowls at them, racing between Lucas’s feet as Lucas carries Mike to bed, and settles onto Mike’s chest to purr while Lucas tugs off his shoes and jeans. Max goes to shower, and Lucas gets undressed and curls around him, exchanging suspicious looks with Ten as they decide how to give Mike all the affection without needing to touch each other.

Mike yawns, nuzzling closer until his nose is pressed against Lucas’s shoulder.

“Hey, you did it,” Lucas teases. “An entire party.”

“Haha,” Mike mumbles. “Yes I did.”

Lucas laughs, the vibrations not unlike Ten’s purring, coming from every direction.

And frankly, Mike decides as he’s falling asleep, ups and downs notwithstanding, life is pretty good right now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anyway prayer circle for s4 to touch on literally *gestures at this whole fic* ANY OF THIS

**Author's Note:**

> please talk to me about this ship or how wildly traumatized mike wheeler definitely for sure is


End file.
